Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The comments I have will just be general. In terms of page by page, I’ll get more into it. I would like to thank the Minister and staff for the presentation.
My comments would be more of supporting the small business sectors in our communities. As the Minister indicated on page 3 of 8, they are the backbone of our northern economy. These small business sectors are the ones that contribute greatly to the people in our communities. They pay the taxes. They deal with the high cost of energy
and fuel and electricity payments to the workers in the wage economy. These small business sectors contribute to the community through donations and contributions and in volunteering their machinery or their time to hold community events. These small business sectors are men and women who grew up in the communities and started out with loans, started out with nothing, sometimes starting out with grants from the government, that evolved into a strong community business. Certainly I agree with the Minister that these small business sectors with the entrepreneurial people are the backbone of our northern economy. They are there in the good times and they are there in the bad times. With the economy the way it is looking right now and the current crisis that we are dealing with, certainly these small businesspeople, these entrepreneurial people need to be supported 110 percent by this government in terms of being able to continue in our communities. That’s something I want to probably speak to you about when we get to those items in the budget here. There are various forms of how to continue supporting these small business sectors and supporting the entrepreneurialship. These people are the backbone, as you say, in our communities and our northern economy. Most likely these people are going to stay in the community, specifically in our region. Now, granted there are various regions in the Northwest Territories that sometimes businesspeople and people who are going after business do come into other regions to bring the costs down on fuel and equipment. That is sometimes an appetite that this government looks at favourably because of the budget and numbers we have to operate it. But that’s where, I guess, there’s a fine balance in terms of pricing. Sometimes these small business people and entrepreneurship feel that this government sometimes doesn’t support them that much. But that’s up for debate. I’ll leave it at that.
The other one is the Tourism Plan. Lots of money going into tourism. I think there are some good opportunities to look at tourism. There are some areas that certainly should be supported and continued. There are some areas that need more support in terms of clientele or bringing people to the Northwest Territories.
I look forward to the Minister’s comments on page 4 of 8 on brand awareness for Canada’s North and the Olympic issues in terms of what type of branding we are going to showcase.
There are other areas I look forward to talking to the Minister about on tourism regarding sport hunting. Certainly the partnership on the Canadian Tourism Commission, I certainly want to say thank you to them. If it wasn’t for them and this department, a group of people from my region would not have had the opportunity to play hockey in London, England. It was with a contribution from
this department and its partners in NWT Tourism and the Canadian Tourism Commission that they got wind of this government declaring Deline as the birthplace of ice hockey in Canada. Somehow they got wind of that and they supported the team to go over and play at Trafalgar Square. So I wanted to say that to the Minister. If I haven’t said thank you already to the Canadian Tourism Commission for allowing something like that to happen. I think the birthplace of ice hockey in Canada should be continued, but that’s another story at another table.
I certainly look forward to having some lively discussions as to the different projects and initiatives under traditional economy. I think traditional economy is taken very lightly. It’s actually our traditional way of life. The economy is what we get from it. I think when you look down to it, it’s our way of life. It’s in our blood. These young people with the elders, it’s something that they, it’s like breathing for some of them. They just have to go out there. Because there’s a demand for these beautiful furs that are caught in the Northwest Territories, they make money off it. For a huge part of it, I really support this program because they’re supporting a way of life that will continue to be supported. Some of these youth trappers who have gone out to trap, I think the government should be commended to continue to really support them.
Like I said before, not all people want to be heavy equipment operators or office managers or deputy ministers or directors. I think a good group of them want to become trappers and practice that way of life as their grandfathers, great-grandfathers, and great-great-grandfathers have done. It’s a beautiful life. It’s a very peaceful life; a very simple life. As I spoke with my father-in-law the other day, it’s a very hard life. But it is a life that should be commended, held high. We should hold it very high in terms of these men and women who want to go into this section of their life. I think that should be looked at and I think we should do more to promote it. So I’m really happy that the Minister is giving some thought to this.
Also with our commercial fishermen around the lake here I’m very concerned with the contaminants that are leaking down from Fort McMurray into the Slave River and into Great Slave Lake. I talked about this again the other day with my father-in-law. He’s been fishing for a number of years around Great Slave Lake and he has noticed that there’s been a change in the fish over the years. He notices that there’s changing of the land, so I’m very concerned and I hope we can do some things on that.
Mr. Chair, the SEED policy, the NWT Development and Investment Corporation, I hope that there’s enough flexibility that would really see the money going to communities. I hope that the economic development officers in the communities really,
really help our people, really sit down with them, explain to them and work with them. I hope that these economic development officers are told that. Just don’t push paper, but sit down and spend some quality time with our people. That’s the way it’s going to work. Those regional officers come into our communities and they sit down and talk about these programs. I’d like to see where money has been lapsed or where our money is not being used, and people get frustrated. In small communities word goes around really fast and they give up, there’s apathy there. So I hope we can change it around, Minister.
The last comment I make to you is around the hydroelectricity and there’s going to be more questions in there in terms of issues that I spoke about earlier. The cost of energy is very important and I wanted to make note that I’m going to speak on these when they come up very strongly in terms of what’s going to happen in our region. Thank you.