Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is right; and in the past, the $390,000 roughly -- and it has been around the same for the last number of years -- was primarily targeted toward a freight subsidy. We did change the program, I think it's two or three years back now. I don't have this information in front of me, but if I remember, there are about four schedules. One of them is for capital upgrades, one of them is to support new entrants to the industry, freight subsidy is still in there, there's another schedule. If I recall, last year the federation had a small surplus in one of the schedules -- I hope I'm right on this -- I think they were allowed to transfer that into another schedule where there was a bit of a deficit. So we think there's adequate flexibility built in. We think the money is being spent each year. I agree that in the past, it probably wasn't if it was reliant on the freight, because if the quotas aren't being reached then that isn't of much use to the federation. So we think that the feedback has been fairly positive on this. There are issues about who decides who gets which money and these kinds of things, and we are using the federation to help us with the determination of that allocation. But there are some issues to work though. We think it's suitably flexible. We think the larger question and larger issue is the long-term viability of this industry, because I think, as the Member has pointed out, even with the subsidy, there are major challenges to this industry going forward. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Brendan Bell on Question 245-15(3): Support For The NWT Commercial Fishery
In the Legislative Assembly on October 19th, 2004. See this statement in context.
Further Return To Question 245-15(3): Support For The Nwt Commercial Fishery
Question 245-15(3): Support For The NWT Commercial Fishery
Item 6: Oral Questions
October 18th, 2004
Page 831
See context to find out what was said next.