Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to thank the Minister and his staff for being here this evening with us to go over the main estimates for ITI. I've got a few general comments that I'd like to make, Mr. Chairman. The first one I guess I'll try to be a little bit funny. The Minister must have got the memo from the Minister of ENR in regard to not mentioning outfitting or caribou in his opening comments to the committee, so I'd like to just start off with that, Mr. Chairman. I didn't notice the word "outfitting" at all in the opening comments. In fact, his department has been somewhat I don't want to say invisible, but not around, I guess. We've had a number of meetings with outfitters back in December. December 16th, I believe it was, at the Northern Frontier Visitors Centre. We had another meeting on Friday with departmental staff from ENR and a number of outfitters, and a number of MLAs were also in attendance at that meeting as was the chief of Yellowknives, Mr. Fred Sangris, but there wasn't anybody from ITI at the meeting. So I just wanted to make a comment to that effect.
I've got a couple of other things I wanted to mention, the Minister, in his opening comments, talks about making sure that communities and businesses are adequately prepared to meet the demands and maximize benefits that the project will bring, this is the Mackenzie gas project. I couldn't agree with them more. I think we have an obligation to all of our residents in the Northwest Territories to ensure that we are ready and we can meet the demands. There is also going to be a number of socio-economic demands on communities that aren't part of the $500 million socio-economic impact fund that the feds announced last year. This is causing a number of communities and aboriginal groups that aren't part of the funding to stand up and question why it is that the government could stand by and get the funding for the affected communities when, if you go off...Every community in the Northwest Territories is going to be impacted one way or another by a $9 billion pipeline down the valley, whether we want to admit that or not. There will be impacts here in Yellowknife; there will be impacts in Fort Smith and in Hay River, communities who aren't part of this funding. So I'd certainly like to see, and I know the Yellowknives Dene First Nation, the Akaitcho, have written a letter to MLAs questioning why they haven't been included in any consultation, negotiation, you know; and they feel they are going to be impacted, as well, by the Mackenzie gas project.
I think it's important. We should take the message to the federal government that, you know, we're a territory of 43,000 people. Every last person is going to be impacted one way or another by this pipeline development and we need to get funding for each and every community. I think if we don't do that, we're not serving everybody here and we're not taking the opportunity to help our people get ready for this development and the impacts that it is going to bring to our communities. I should also mention the community of Behchoko in that, as well. We need to really seriously sit down with the federal government and iron out if there's another fund that can be set up for maybe communities that, according to the federal government, aren't as impacted as the ones up and down the valley then that's something I believe we should explore.
Let's see. The other thing, while I've got the floor, Mr. Chairman, I just wanted to touch on just a little bit is the program review, the BDIC. It's been in the works for a little while now and I'm just wondering -- when we get to that section I can ask questions specific to that - but, you know, it just hasn't grown legs or seem to have developed into much and we still have, and my estimation would be areas of our operation that, you know, is there duplication. Just by looking at it from the outside I would suggest that
there is. Is there a way to do things better? I would suggest there is. What are we doing? I think we can do more in that regard, but, again, I'll have specific questions when we get to that page in the detail, Mr. Chairman.
Again, the department has done some very good things and before I...I know I've mentioned a few things it could work on, but I also wanted to mention the Tourism 2010 Strategy, the much needed funding that's gone into tourism and tourism marketing. The goals in that Tourism 2010 plan are a little bit lofty. Whether we can hit the targets on outside investment I hope we can, but they are quite lofty. We need to spend, as Madam Groenewegen mentioned in the committee's report, there's competition out there in the aurora tourism industry and we certainly need to pay attention to that and come up with ways to get some more money, especially into aurora tourism. We can't afford, if we're looking at diversifying our economy and growing a tourism sector, we can't stand by and watch this industry take a nose dive. We can't do that. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.