From CBC.ca
Members on a Northwest Territories legislative committee have asked federal Auditor General Sheila Fraser's office to review a $34-million government loan to northern airline Discovery Air.
The 48-month loan given out last month was the first of its kind from the N.W.T. government's Opportunities Fund. The loan helped replace the company's $33-million debt.
The legislature's economic development committee forwarded a number of concerns about the loan to the auditor general's office.
"I think you have to be accountable to somebody in doing that," Kam Lake MLA Dave Ramsay, who chairs the committee, told CBC News on Thursday.
"There's some policy changes in that Opportunities Fund that I think the auditor general should have a look at as well ... the decision-making process needs to be thoroughly examined so something like this doesn't happen again."
Ramsay would not say what MLAs have been told about what Discovery Air assets were used to secure the loan, except to say those assets were "not substantial."
A spokesman for Discovery Air would not discuss those assets either.
