SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Future mines, the Mackenzie Gas Project, infrastructure planning - all were up for discussion at the fourth annual NWT Aboriginal Business Conference in Yellowknife last week.

The 2009 NWT Aboriginal Business Conference, held in Yellowknife last week, attracted several southern companies including Minnesota-based Northern Toboggan and Sled, which supplies traditional towing toboggans and freight sleds to NWT communities such as Colville Lake. Director of sales and marketing and first-time attendee Jackson Morret shows off his product. - Guy Quenneville/NNSL photo

Hosted by Denendeh Investment Inc. (DII), the conference attracted more than 200 attendees, up by 40 from last year including a larger-than-ever contingent of southern-based companies, according to conference co-ordinator Darlene Mandeville.

Darrell Beaulieu, president and CEO of Denendeh, kicked things off with a speech highlighting the vast business potential of the territory, particularly its mining sector.

"I've said it numerous times over the years: if I just look at the Slave Geological Province, I think only 15 per cent of that has been explored. There's still another 85 per cent that has yet to be explored," said Beaulieu.

Denis Nelner, general manager of Nogha Enterprises in Fort Simpson, wanted to make sure that Canadian Zinc's Prairie Creek mine, located near Nahanni Butte, was on the radar of the Conference Board of Canada, whose representative Pedro Antunes gave an economic forecast for the NWT that predicts increased mining activity in 2010.

"There's going to be over 200 jobs created," said Nelner of Prairie Creek, which is currently undergoing environmental assessment by the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Review Board.

Meanwhile, Canadian Zinc is limiting spending on the project, with activities on-site reduced to sporadic work on reestablishing a road from the mine site to the Liard Highway, as well as environmental baseline studies including collection of water samples.

"They are actively keeping things going," said Nelner, adding that the recently built Fort of the Forks hotel complex in Fort Simpson is well positioned to take advantage of the flow of people that will arrive once the regulatory process for Prairie Creek is completed and activity ramps up again.

Amy Miersch, the economic development officer for Fort Resolution, was primarily interested in getting an update on the Mackenzie Gas Project, which will create thousands of construction jobs if it goes ahead.

"I want to know what the opportunities are going to be," she said.

Bob Reid, president of the Aboriginal Pipeline Group, gave a fairly standard primer on the pipeline, with one noticeable exception: a highly speculative, estimation of when the pipeline will begin flowing gas south.

On a slide showing a possible timeline for the project - a timeline assuming the successful delivery of the Joint Review Panel report in December - the pipeline was shown pumping its first gas in 2016.

Reid also took the opportunity to assert a view previously hammered by the GNWT.

"Mackenzie and (the Alaska Gas Project) are not in competition with each other," he said. "It's very important that we don't build these pipelines at the same time. They've got to be sequenced. Mackenzie has to go first. But Mackenzie will go, and both pipelines are required in order to keep the (natural gas) production level out of the Canadian basins (going)."

Mike Vaydik, general manager of the NWT and Chamber of Mines, used the conference as a forum to promote the chamber's vision, first touted in July, of a unified strategy between government and industry toward developing mine-related infrastructure with benefits for Northern communities.

The plan suggests installing nuclear power plants at four mine sites to reduce the territory's dependence on fuel. But the nuclear option was met with scepticism by both Ndilo Chief Ted Tsetta and Dene National Chief Bill Erasmus.

"I don't know a lot about it, but when I think of it, it's a little bit frightening," said Erasmus.

"We're all aware of concerns over nuclear power, about radiation," Vaydik said in response. "I'm not going to say you shouldn't be concerned about that. But I think that the modern nuclear industry has been working without incident for many years. I know that it's safer to live beside a nuclear plant in terms of the radiation you absorb than it is to live near a coal-fired generation plant.

"So I think it's incumbent upon all of us to learn about the modern nuclear industry."

Elsewhere at the conference, a number of industry organizations and businesses set up booths at the trade show in the adjoining room.

First-time attendee Jackson Harren travelled to Yellowknife from Warroad, Minnesota, to promote Northern Toboggan and Sled, a company that supplies traditional towing toboggans and freights sleds to several NWT communities, most notably Colville Lake.

"There's a real focus right now on getting people out on the land to continue traditional practices and I'm here to get the word out about what we do," said Harren, director of sales and marketing for the company. "So far I've gotten a lot of interest from different communities."