Mr. Speaker, I’m very pleased to see the honourable Member come to realize the value of tourism and that he will support making
more resources available to promote the Northwest Territories.
I think that as a territory we have been very successful in the last few years in increasing the level of resources available for tourism. We have been working in partnership with the N.W.T. Tourism Association. We have the Tourism 2010 Strategy. We have more than doubled the amount of money we are investing in tourism.
Working with the other two territories of Yukon and Nunavut, we established a marketing campaign that was held in conjunction with the Canada Winter Games and that was very successful. For the first time in nine years we had the federal government invest in tourism for the Northwest Territories. So we have really increased the exposure for the Northwest Territories.
To be able to reach the par of a province like Newfoundland, I think we would have to look at investing more resources. We would probably have to look at perhaps introducing a hotel tax, which every jurisdiction in Canada has except the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. It costs money to advertise on a national basis, and advertising on TV costs a lot of money. That’s the direction we have to go.