Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I don't have much to add. A lot of my thoughts have already been expressed by the other Members as they spoke earlier on. I have just a couple of comments: one on fisheries and one on the fur marketing and fur products and arts and crafts.
When we hear about fisheries in the territories, it appears that a lot of the thought that has gone into it deals with the char fishing industry and perhaps not so much on the freshwater fish on this side of the territories. Both products are commendable. They come from pretty clean water and all that and it's a component that I think should be used in the marketing strategy a little bit more.
But getting back to the point, freshwater fishing on this side of the lake has come under considerable stress because of the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation and the way they are perceived to deal with fishermen. The Minister commented in his remarks that we will consult with the fishermen to determine what has to be next, once the government accepts or rejects the report of the committee on fisheries and oceans.
We have received delegation after delegation after delegation from the fishermen in Hay River. That's just Yellowknife MLAs, and I can just imagine what it was like with other MLAs. People were pleading with us to assist in getting a better market or better dollar for their product and being treated a little more fairly than in the past. So maybe it's a good thing if you're getting out of the freshwater fish marketing. If the Northwest Territories government takes over the responsibilities, our hope is that it's not just another freshwater fish marketing board in NWT clothing; that they really do meet with the fishermen and discuss with them what they see best.
I know here in Yellowknife that we've been fortunate to have a little company move in and set up a small, family operation down on the lake. There seems to be a steady path beaten to their door by just Yellowknifers looking for their product. It was difficult to get fresh fish in this community that was from the Northwest Territories. Fishermen like to go out and catch their own, but there are many, many people who can't do that so there's a market here in the territories for that kind of a product if it becomes available. It's encouraging to see that the government will be looking at this from the fishermen's point of view, as well. They know where the market is as well as anybody else, and maybe some of the middle people be cut out of the system so that there will be more of a return to the producers than is there at the present time.
Mr. Chairman, the other area I was wanting to make some comments on, I don't want an answer from the Minister right at the moment. I just wanted to comment on the arts and crafts. I've raised this a number of times over the years that lots of good crafts are produced in the territories, but they're so predictable. You see carvings that look pretty much the same made by different people, lots of things that are pretty much the same.
I raise the issue sometimes of carvings being carved by skilled people to meet the needs of the market. Soapstone can be shaped into many different forms other than just the traditional seals and walrus and bears, et cetera. I've seen and purchased -- and Mr. Morin will attest to this -- when we were overseas we bought little figurines like a bust, the head and face of elders carved in soapstone. It's so life-like you could almost tap on them and say "Grandpa, talk to me." That can be done, I'm sure, by our carvers here. It's another market. It's would what people would want. But I've been told that's not the way we do things. We make our drums a certain way, we make our little rattles the same way. That's fine, but when you're trying to develop a product sometimes you want to go out and find out what people want, find out if there's a certain niche in the market for what the people want and are going to buy it.
So you say to the producers that this is what is selling, this is what is popular and this is what will put some dollars into your pockets. If you want to get in the market we'll help you, we'll attract the clientele, we'll find out where the market is and we can steer you to that direction, but this is what we need.
It was sad when Expo had to return a lot of the products that were sent over there because they may not have been marketable. But had there been some way of determining what people would be buying, cost-wise as well...When you go to a store here in the territories and you look for artwork, sometimes the most popular stuff that sells is stuff that's cast, replicas of something or other and they're made offshore. That's not really fair to the producers who do good work, but maybe that's what we need to start doing as well. We have two products, one that's the trinket trade and the other is for the more serious buyers. A lot of times people will come up to visit the north and they don't have an awful lot of money but they want to take something back with them so they take back something that's inexpensive. I've seen some very nice inexpensive fur products, things that we're made out of sealskin and stuff like that. They're small, they're inexpensive and they sell.
Those are the kinds of things I'm saying to the economic development people: look at those kinds of markets and encourage people to participate in those two levels. I don't think it's offending the arts and craft people who do good work, but the reality of it is that if there's any money to be made let's make it. You find other people doing the same.
I noticed in the comments that the Minister made, that for the longest time we've been saying the offshore businesses are probably the place to go; Japan, China, Pacific-rim business, because we do border them and there's a lot of money there. I guess I'm a little disappointed in the comment that for a number of years efforts to expand the marketplace concentrated offshore in Europe and Japan but the market doesn't indicate that that's where the market is, or your studies don't indicate this is where the market is. I'm sure you've done the analysis and all that, but I'm quite surprised because it seems the Japanese and the Chinese are looking for products in North America and here we're saying it's really not where the market is, the largest potential is in North America. I don't know how the study of this has come about, but it seems to have been a switch from the last couple of years from what I've been hearing and I'm a little surprised at that.
The other thing is with regard to natural resources and the issue of fur. It's good to see that there has been some movement made now in the seal industry. I was listening to a program yesterday, Cross Country Check-up, where they kind of allude to the fact that there's going to be some development in that area, some movement in that area to get away from the stigma that had occurred a few years ago with the baby seals and the decimation of the seal pelt market. If it ever gets moving a little bit, it will benefit the people of the Northwest Territories because, as a by-product of harvesting seals for food, the pelts will be of some value. There's a bit of market there and we have to be very careful how we do this because I think that the anti-seal hunt people are still out there and if we make a mistake somewhere along the way they would certainly be quick to jump on us and shut that down again.
The secondary industry dealing with fur -- the primary, of course, being the trapping and selling of raw fur -- being the processing of fur and making products out of it. Again here, the establishment of manufacturing facilities in the Kitikmeot and the Inuvik regions. By the sound of it, they're talking about fairly expensive items, coats and things like that. Recently, Mr. Chairman, I bought two fur hats, rat skin hats. Both of them were made in Winnipeg. There's no reason why those types of hats can't be made here in the Northwest Territories. We have duffle, we have good quality rat skins and lots of them, so there's no reason why these types of items need to be made in Manitoba.