Several chambers of commerce in the territory are reacting negatively to comments in News/North last week by the NWT Housing Corporation's president, who suggested local housing organizations could sell building materials in communities without hardware stores.
SA国际影视传媒淪o, one of the things that we were looking at in the new year is ... we may get our local housing organization to serve as a hardware store in the smaller communities to provide material which could be purchased,SA国际影视传媒� said Tom Williams, in a story addressing chronic housing shortages in the territory.
In an open letter published Monday afternoon, six chamber directors and presidents slammed the possible program as SA国际影视传媒渆xtremely upsetting and discouraging.
SA国际影视传媒淲e respectively request that the NWT Housing Corporation immediately cease any further planning and/or roll out of the above-mentioned program. This will irreparably harm existing local businesses in an already grim economic outlook.SA国际影视传媒�
SA国际影视传媒淭he role of government and Crown corporations is not to be competition to private industry but to help support it and grow the economy. If the local hardware stores had more government support, they would be able to lower their prices due to the increase in sales.
SA国际影视传媒淒riving businesses to shut down due to the lack of support or unnecessary competition created by their own government in unfair and against the housing corporation's own mission statement,SA国际影视传媒� reads the letter.
The NWT Housing Corporation explained to SA国际影视传媒 a possible plan to roll out hardware stores in small communities.
SA国际影视传媒淲here there are no competing businesses and homeowners wouldn't have access to building materials, we're exploring the option of having our local housing organizations be able to sell building materials to homeowners,SA国际影视传媒� said Charles Sanders, spokesperson for the housing corporation.
Efforts to contact Ren茅e Comeau, executive director of the NWT Chamber of Commerce, were not immediately successful.
Read the full story in Wednesday's Yellowknifer.
