Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I certainly spoke in favour of the splitting of the departments in order to better serve the people of the NWT. As it's laid out before me, another initiative that I did speak for was that tourism has to be brought to the forefront of our government as it is a growing industry, particularly in my riding. It's something you want to capture as much as the tourism dollars are passing through right now aren't being captured enough as it is. Some of the things that are important are we do have the Acho Dene Craft Store that wishes to capture more tourists. A lot of tourists end up in Fort Simpson; go over to the Nahanni Mountains down the South Nahanni River to Nahanni Butte. There is a bit of a craft shop there that takes advantage of them. They come out to Blackstone and they drive back to Fort Simpson, completely missing Fort Liard altogether. It would be a huge boon to that economy if we could somehow capture that piece of the market.
Another thing that happens is that every year starting sooner, a lot of people drive the Alaska Highway. When they are passing Fort Nelson, there is a nice paved road that goes up to the border, but that's for another department. They pass our road and there is no significant signage that says here is the path to the NWT, come and see Fort Liard. That's another way we could capture more tourism. I think there is a small sign that says up to the Northwest Territories, but we need a nice big sign. I don't know if studies have been done to see if increasing signage will increase tourism for people who want to come North. In fact, I don't know how much advertising there is in B.C. about using our Deh Cho connection. There is a big loop there that we could use to capture more tourists during the summer months. In fact, it can act like a gateway into the parks and to see our natural resources, Mr. Chairman. That's something I spoke in favour of and that's something we are going to have to develop and capture those natural resources and take advantage of them.
It's not clear how much our tourism budget has increased over last year. Perhaps the Minister can speak to that, Mr. Chairman.