I do understand the pressure the midwifery service is in in Yellowknife, as well the challenge of expanding services within our system which is already currently under enormous financial pressure. The only way for us to expand programs such as that is to make some real bending-the-trend changes that changes the trajectory of where we are going with the health and social system where we can focus on prevention, focus on community care, and midwifery fits into that. In order for us to resource it in a way that we would like to see, not only in Yellowknife but across the Territories, we need to make some profound changes, and the Foundation for Change, which I'm going to be tabling next week, will speak to that. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, some people will even say that delivering babies is almost as old as time, and it's certainly a natural process. As we all know, most pregnancies go without any complication and I'm certainly grateful to know that that is certainly the trend. But, Mr. Speaker, midwives play an essential part in our health care reform and, Mr. Speaker, will this delivery for change or the expansion for change demonstrate and, certainly, say we are going to add more services in the Midwife Program? Thank you.

Certainly midwifery is something that is not only good on its own merit, it's something that we would like to see especially in communities where there is no permanent, reliable physician services, which is all of the communities outside of Yellowknife and Inuvik. I do appreciate, I think it does a great job in Smith and I know it really fills a void in a community like Fort Smith where we don't have a resident doctor.

Yellowknife, I know that the program is really popular and we need to make some major investments to expand these programs, especially in places where physicians are not available. But in order to do that, we need to make some changes within our system and I think the committee has already seen our Foundation for Change plan and we need to work together and work hard to see how we focus our resources on places like midwifery throughout the Territories, not just Yellowknife, but of course including Yellowknife. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Your final supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We all know that an obstetrician costs a lot more than a midwife and in many cases a midwife can offer the same types of services that an obstetrician would offer. Of course, as I said in my statement and as the Minister knows very well, that if there's a problem, the midwife will refer the patient back to the system of specialists. Mr. Speaker, that obstetrician costs a lot more than a midwife and, furthermore, our doctors, as we all know, are extremely overworked as is. So, Mr. Speaker, everybody knows, as well, that midwives can deliver this in a compassionate and an affordable way.

So, Mr. Speaker, would the Minister update her website that talks about attracting more health care professionals and also will she inform this House as to potentially maybe how many more midwives we can be offering not just in Yellowknife but throughout the Territory as a whole? I think we could all benefit from the expansion of these services, not just here but everywhere in the North. Thank you.

In our discussion I think it's important to note that midwives or the midwifery service does not in any way replace or reduce, really, doctors' work. They work in partnership and I guess in the long run and in provinces like Ontario where there are a large number of midwives, they are beginning to get into reducing a doctor's workload, but we have a long way to go. We couldn't do that with the one or two or three or four midwives and certainly I think that is the way that we should be heading for the Territories for the next 10 or 20 years.

In terms of advertising on the website for a midwife position, it's hard to advertise for a position when we do not have, right now, positions open for midwifery. I think we should strengthen training of midwives. I would love to see midwives, local women or men, being trained out of the Sahtu. I think that would be very good there. Inuvik, Beaufort-Delta and extra midwives be trained for Yellowknife and Hay River. So we need to train our own midwives and then to expand the services, but we need to do a lot of work, because we can't continue to add on services without looking at how we can move our resources around at the same time, because everybody here knows the pressure that the system is under. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. The honourable Member for Great Slave, Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Minister responsible for Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. Bob McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The NWT Arts Strategy is a document that is prepared with the Department of Education, Culture and Employment and the Department of ITI. We do it jointly and we update it every few years. Our government is a very active supporter of the performing arts. I'm very pleased to advise the Member that in this 2009-10 ECE budget, $700,000 was added to the 2008-09 investment of $500,000 for artists and cultural organizations in this important sector. Also, every year in all five of our regions ITI recognizes the performing arts through funding of various initiatives and activities held in their communities. Also we provide direct and financial support to NACC for the Northern Performance Promotional Materials Program and I know of at least one performer that took advantage of that this year. Thank you.

I'd like to thank the Minister for that. Just as a reference or as a note, I did mention the increased money that we have been putting into arts and I applauded the Department of Education, Culture and Employment and ITI for doing that.

My Member's statement was more along the lines of taking that next step. I know that we support these artists and we help them develop product, but then there's nothing. There's no encouragement of these artists or partnerships of these artists to work together with the Government of the Northwest Territories to have them go out and champion the Northwest Territories. The Arts Strategy itself -- and I'm glad it's updated on a regular basis -- only has a small reference to the performing artists and I don't see a tie with ITI specifically, them working with the performing artists as a means of promoting the Northwest Territories as a whole, which in fact promotes the artists themselves. So I wonder if I could get the Minister to talk a little bit more about that specific aspect of it and tell me what his department is going to do to work with these artists to have them work together to promote the Northwest Territories and themselves.

Certainly I feel we promote northern artists here in the Northwest Territories very well and one area the Member mentioned was using NWT artists to promote tourism in southern Canada and certainly we're quite prepared to do that. It's all dependent on the level of resources that we have for tourism. It's a struggle every year to get funding to promote tourism. In the past we've tried hotel tax to try to get more money for tourism, but certainly the more resources we have dedicated for tourism, the more we can do to promote tourism using northern performers. Thank you.

Promoting and supporting I think are slightly different things. In a related topic, in reviewing the Spectacular NWT campaign supported by ITI, I find very little reference other than basic ads to performing artists and events held throughout the Northwest Territories. These events themselves are tourism draws and our northern performers could, and would, be willing to be our champions in this area, promoters of the Northwest Territories like Susan Aglukark was for Nunavut. She basically did a lot to put Nunavut on the map and it also helped her career as well. We're missing a great opportunity to work with people like Pat Braden of Yellowknife, Diga of Behchoko, Leanne Goose of Beaufort-Delta and Leela Gilday of the Sahtu and many, many others from across the Northwest Territories. Would the Minister commit to working with Education, Culture and Employment to identify northern performing artists and find ways to incorporate these northern performers into our Tourism Strategy and our tourism campaign? Thank you.

Certainly through the Vancouver Olympics in 2010 we are showcasing northern performers there as well, but I'd be very pleased to work with my colleague, the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, and work with the Member, as well, to find ways to improve our showcasing of northern performers. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are also addressed to the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment and, not surprisingly, I had a few questions in my statement, which I want to follow up on.

The impression that I got in reading the article in the Yellowknifer was that the department has gathered some information from the use of campgrounds and the number of camping visitors we had from this past season, 2009. The impression that the Minister gave me in June was that there would be a report. So I would like to ask the Minister, is there a report coming and is the Minister planning on presenting these findings any time soon?

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The honourable Minister responsible for Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. Bob McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Here in the Northwest Territories we are very lucky to have an impressive array of territorial parks for people to use for camping. We do, as a matter of course, a review of our summer camping season every year and we are now gathering information and we will be doing a review and we'll be able to share the results of that review at the appropriate time. Thank you.

I appreciate that we're going to get a review. You kind of sound like another Minister when you talk about receiving the review. It sounds like in the fullness of time. I'd like it a little sooner than that, I think.

I'd like to know if the Minister could advise the parameters of this report. I mentioned a number of changes that occurred in the 2009 season. Will this report be looking at the impact that these changes had on the numbers, the usage of campsites, the number of campground visitors in this past season and also the incidences of people who were camping outside our campgrounds and trespassing, so to speak? Thank you.

This summer our parks ran very smoothly. There were very few complaints from the public and I would certainly like to commend our parks contractors and our parks staff for the excellent job that they did. Also we've received a lot of positive comments on the campgrounds from the park contractors and I'm very pleased to advise that our revenues increased by 27 percent this year, but we will be looking at all of the information. We kept information on camping permits that have been sold, we gather information on the total nights of camping, the total camping visitors and we will be looking at all of those things.

In terms of squatters and people that are using other places to camp, that's not our jurisdiction. That's either federal land management or if it's on Commissioner's lands, that would be my colleague at Municipal and Community Affairs. Thank you.

I guess I have to take it from that reply and I want to just sort of back up and say at the outset that I do appreciate what ITI does in terms of campgrounds and campsites and the work that the contractors do. I think they do do a good job, but there certainly were some changes that were made and I'm looking for some evaluation of how those changes impacted the efforts of this past year, the campers who used our campsites this past season. So I gather that there was no monitoring of people who were squatting outside of our campgrounds and I guess that means since the Minister said ITI didn't do it, I would have to then ask the Minister of MACA, but I'll have to do that another time.

In terms of possible changes, which were referenced in the article in the Yellowknifer, I'd like to ask the Minister whether or not the department is considering changes to the operation of camps, seasonal sites and fees and so on for the 2010 season. Is that something that's likely to be encompassed in the report that's coming in time? Thank you.

Things change as we go along and certainly we're adding another loop to the Reid Lake campground. So certainly it gives us more flexibility. We don't always develop our programs based on editorials in the Yellowknifer, but we will look at all of these different areas and certainly we will be prepared to look at seasonal campgrounds as well. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Your final supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thanks to the Minister for his response. I certainly agree with you, I don't make my decisions based on editorials in the Yellowknifer either. The Minister referenced the report in time. Could I get a shorter time frame than “in time”? Any idea when this report might be coming forward? Are we talking three months, are we talking six months, are we talking a year? Thank you.