http://www.alaskadispatch.com/
Business is booming at the Kingland Ford dealership in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. Franky Nitsiza, who lives in the Dene community of Whatì, about 180 kilometres northwest of Yellowknife, has brought in his Ford F-150 truck for maintenance and is already shopping around for a new one.
Nitsiza has been working at BHP Billiton’s EKATI diamond mine for 14 years and credits his job at the mine for the bit of prosperity he’s been able to enjoy. “It was a big learning experience for me, but I’ve worked my way up to become a team leader,” Nitsiza said while his family members looked around the showroom.
Brent Stevens, the general manager at Kingland Ford, said diamond mines have created many well-paying jobs in the region. The resulting business has helped propel Kingland into the 100 top Ford dealerships in Canada. It’s a no mean feat considering that the entire population of Northwest Territories is about 44,000 people.
“We obviously sell more cars and trucks if we have more customers that are employed,” Stevens said.
And just like Nitsiza, many of Stevens’s customers are ready to shell out anywhere between $40,000 to $70,000 to buy a pickup truck.
“In the North, an F-150 pickup is like the family sedan, for a lot of folks it’s the principle source of transportation,” Stevens said. “Seventy-five per cent of what we sell are pickups.”
It’s the same story down the road at the Yellowknife Motors GM dealership where several customers – many sporting logos of diamond mines on their baseball caps or vests – mill around the showroom.
“The fact that there are diamond mines operating and that they employ skilled workers from Yellowknife is obviously good for the whole community,” said Greg Boucher, the owner of Yellowknife Motors. “These people contribute to our economy in many different ways, they are homeowners, they buy vehicles, they buy goods in town, so it’s been good for all of Yellowknife.”
Perfect timing
For Bob McLeod, the Premier of Northwest Territories, diamond mining couldn’t have come at a better time.
When diamonds were discovered in this remote part of northern Canada in 1991, the Northwest Territories were going through an economic downturn. Gold mining, which had been the economic engine of the territory for about 60 years, was running on fumes. On top of that, the Northwest Territories were about to be split into two. The western part of the territory kept its name Northwest Territories, and the new territory of Nunavut was created in Canada’s eastern Arctic. Many government jobs had to be transferred from Yellowknife to Iqaluit, Nunavut’s capital.
The discovery of diamonds in the Lac de Gras area about 310 kilometres northeast of Yellowknife and the subsequent exploration and mine construction boom brought in billions of dollars into the territorial economy.
Three diamond mines currently operate in the Northwest Territories and a fourth one, located about 280 kilometres northeast of Yellowknife, is in the advanced stages of development.
The British-Australian mining giant, BHP Billiton, has invested over $4.8 billion in its EKATI Mine, Canada’s first diamond mine. Of that amount, $3.8 billion has been spent on goods and services provided by northern and aboriginal businesses since 1999, said Deana Twissell, superintendent of community and external affairs at the EKATI Mine.
For the rest of this article, please go to the Alaska Dispatch website: http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/diamond-mines-create-vibrant-canadian-economy-out-stagnation