Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I'm glad the Minister has outlined the process where these renewals will not happen automatically. Maybe the terms of automatic renewal should be described in a different language as to what he just said here in terms of these licences, and what constitutes a valid, legitimate, accumulative complaint. The department may have a different interpretation; people in the communities may have a different interpretation. What checkmark says if you pass this threshold it's a complaint? You have to measure, so that's what I'm concerned about in terms of the process of the Minister. It's a good process. I think it's workable. I think you need to sit down with the region a little more in terms of rubber stamping the automatic renewal of a licence, and there are some questions that have to be asked in terms of the process so I want to let the Minister know that.

The other one is...I'm going to use my time, Mr. Chair, and the Minister can respond as he pleases on my questions here.

Mr. Chair, the other one is that with the licences for the outfitters specifically, because I think I have about seven or eight outfitters in the Sahtu region and they cover a vast, wide area of their own jurisdiction under their own licence. I want to talk to the Minister and his officials in terms of these operators in terms of their requirement for a licence. I think we need to really support the communities and I think they are somewhat being supported by the outfitters by providing them at the end of the season, they fly in moose meat or caribou meat into the communities. That's a plus for us. That's a plus for our elders. I think that needs to be really strongly worded in this new act, especially for outfitters in our region, that caribou or moose is distributed equally in the region, I think it's done, and I want to see if there is a means within the licence regulation that these outfitters begin having somewhat of an access and benefit agreement with our communities. Access to our lands, access to the areas that we traditionally hunt, food, benefits of training, benefits of bringing the moose and caribou meat into our people, benefits of having our people look at the possibility of guides, different levels of guides. So these are the type of benefits from this new Tourism Act that would be really helpful for our people in the region, and tourism that the northern people can take.

We have old people in our region that are 60, 70 years ago, that love to go out sometimes and cut up moose meat and cut up caribou and sheep, and cook out there in the mountains. That's their home, Mr. Chairman. These outfitters have to recognize that.

I met with an outfitter this past summer with Mr. Handley and a few people that walked the Canol Heritage Trail, and I did talk to the outfitters and not one single aboriginal

person from the Northwest Territories was at that camp. That's what I'm talking about; people talking about why our own people in our own land are not in those camps. At least at the Dechenia Lodge close to the Yukon border there were people there from the Kaska Nation cooking, guiding and working. So this act better speak to something that informs and invests our people into those regions. It's our land. They got these licences at some other time and area. They do good work out there. They provide dollars to our region. They have to make sure it stays in our region and with our people. We can't have old ladies and old men sitting in Tulita. When they can go back on the land, in the mountains, and they're 60 and 70 years old, they're like 30 and 40 years old. They've got lots of energy. That's their land. They can do that. So I think that's something that I'd like to see being really strong for our tourism in our act here. We have to see the benefits.

I want to say that, Mr. Chair, in terms of my disappointment in one of those camps that we visited. Good camp, nice people, God bless them, but I was very disappointed not to see one of our own aboriginal people out there, Dene or Metis, Gwich'in, Inuvialuit, none of them. I didn't see anything. So that's where our people get mad in terms of we have outfitters in our mountains, in our homeland.

My grandfather is from there, Chief Albert Wright. He signed the treaty in 1921. Did you know that he posts along the mountains to indicate that they signed this treaty, a peace treaty? I wonder if these outfitters know about these posts and know about our lands. I don't think so, because I talked to one of the young people that was guiding out there. I asked that young person, you're a guide? He said yes. I said, do you also skin the sheep? He said yes. I said, where do you do it? He told me where. I said, don't you know from our elders that you can't skin a sheep at the place where you shot it? You have to carry it maybe two miles or a mile away from it. That's what we're taught from our values and our culture; respecting the sheep and that they skin it in a certain way. I didn't know that. I didn't know that. Well, that outfitter has been there for a long, long time and not knowing the value, the basic culture of our people. So we ought to have some say into this. So, Mr. Chairman, I certainly look forward to seeing if these clauses under the Tourism Act capture something that my people can be proud of, and people in the Northwest Territories can be proud of, that the Northwest Territories aboriginal people's culture and values need to be reflected in acts like this. There's a long history here.

So I want to thank the Minister and thank the committee for bringing forward this act and doing the hard work. It's the first time I'm really making comments to the act like this, so I want to say that, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.