Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, Members often stand in this Assembly to make complaints about the shortcomings of government departments. Today, I rise to give thanks for assistance given at a critical time in my home community.

In late August, a very difficult situation arose in Arctic Bay. Niglasuk, a company owned by the Hunters and Trappers Organization in Arctic Bay, had planned a new venture. With the assistance of Canada North Outfitting, they had booked 13 American sport hunters to hunt caribou using sport hunting tags. The HTO was very pleased with this opportunity to earn income from sports hunting and had gone to the trouble of building a camp at Admiralty Inlet especially for these hunters.

However, when the first two hunters arrived in Arctic Bay, it turned out that through an oversight the necessary paperwork had not been concluded to allow the hunt to proceed. Since I understood that a commercial caribou quota had been set aside for the High Arctic, I turned to the Honourable Stephen Kakfwi, Minister of Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development and Mr. Ben Kovic, chair of the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board, to see if the situation could be corrected in time to allow the planned hunts to proceed.

I wish to thank Mr. Stephen Kakfwi, Mr. Ben Kovic and their officials for the extraordinary efforts they undertook to correct the situation and allow the hunt to go ahead. I was very pleased to learn that provisions of the Inuit Land Claim Agreement do permit flexibility in situations such as the one which arose, and I was also pleased to learn that the Wildlife Management Board and the GNWT department could have such a good, co-operative working relationship. I know that they had to do a lot of work in a short period of time. If the sport hunters had to be turned away, it would have been a great setback for the renewable resources economy in Arctic Bay. For a community with high unemployment, the impact of these hunts is very significant. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.