Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There was a substantial reduction in the amount of money that was provided to the tourism associations over the past few years. I think that a concern of a number of people in this House is that we do not spend enough money promoting the North, particularly in comparison to other jurisdictions like the Yukon. Their government spends a tremendous amount of money to promote the territory. I think that many of us believe we have tremendous potential in tourism and that we need to assist tourism operators better, in order to achieve that potential.
I think that we can get more jobs for Northerners if we can get more tourists to come here and visit this Territory. I would just like to get a sense as to whether the Minister has given any consideration to increasing the budget for marketing tourism in the Northwest Territories? Would he at least consider looking at some way to improve the support to the tourism marketing associations in the Territories in the business planning process?