Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First and
foremost, I am going to support the motion to delete this money. I think this motion, as many other motions that Regular Members have passed, speaks volumes to the involvement that Regular Members have had. Personally, I worked in Parks for eight years, and I know my colleague Mr. Abernethy worked in Parks. A number of us across here, if not all of us, understand and appreciate what investing in our parks system and in our tourism industry means to the Northwest Territories. However, when we’re presented with a plan that we haven’t had any input into, we haven’t had any discussion about, and the projects end up coming in…. We only see the information the department provides us. If ITI wanted to move some money around for an RV park here in
Yellowknife, I think they perhaps would have the ability to do that without much trouble, even with us passing this motion.
I understand — and just going back to the last interim appropriation — the government approved in the area of parks renewal $2.318 million. That provided some renovation money and upgrade money across the parks system in the Northwest Territories.
I know the department has an ambitious plan of spending $4.5 million on this strategic investment area in tourism and parks. I do want to say to the government that I support and applaud that effort to spend more money in the parks, but I think it should go through the proper channels and go through a business planning process where Regular Members can have some input into where the money is being spent — how we’re going to arrive at our end goal of spending that $4.5 million the most effective way that we can. With that, I’ll leave it to my colleagues to speak to the motion as well. Thank you.