Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Maybe there’s an idea here that we have some very well-structured buildings in some of the regions in terms of treatment centres. Can the Minister, again, work with his Cabinet colleagues in terms of seeing if there’s the possibility of having some of the residential school parent survivors attend some of these...have an opportunity of going to some of these camps such as Tl'oondih up in Inuvik, even Nats'ejee K'eh in terms of having parents go into these type of treatment centres so they can do some of their own healing? Thank you.

Certainly I’ll work with my colleagues, if the need arises. In the past there have been some individuals that have been through the system, have gone to treatment centres in the past. So we’ll continue to support those individuals as much as we can from our GNWT perspective. We’ll do what we can to support those individuals. Mahsi.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister responsible for Industry, Tourism and Investment and are in follow-up to my Member’s statement from earlier today. Could the Minister responsible for Industry, Tourism and Investment please tell me what ITI is currently doing to promote the Northwest Territories as a suitable and desirable location for national and international conferences? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That’s the best idea I’ve heard today.

---Laughter

We certainly recognize the importance of business travellers to the Northwest Territories and, as a matter of fact, business travellers are the largest and fastest growing segment of all of the visitors to the Northwest Territories. It’s an area that we will continue to support.

Last year ITI supported conferences at a number of centres including Inuvik, Deline, Fort Simpson and, as mentioned earlier, even here in Yellowknife. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I’m happy to hear that. Can I get the Minister to go into a bit more detail? Were those national and international conferences that they supported, and how and in what capacity did they support these conferences?

The ones that I referred to were mainly national conferences. The international ones usually can’t afford to pay for all of their own expenses.

I’m still trying to get a little bit more detail on what they mean by support. I know that a lot of the departments have gone a long way to actually provide some money to conferences when they come up, but what I’m talking about more specifically is promoting the Northwest Territories and having the associations that are in the Northwest Territories go out and work their national and international bodies to try and come up here.

In my Member’s statement I talked about a support mechanism that the government could put into place to encourage local associations to convince their national or international counterparts to hold their national or international conferences here in the Northwest Territories; specifically, a financial incentive that should a local group successfully lobby these organizations and hold their meetings here,. I believe with minor modifications to the SEED program, this might be an appropriate funding source. What is the SEED budget today and how much is actually being expended? Are we surplusing any of the SEED budget?

The SEED program is one of the best programs ever introduced in this government and it’s oversubscribed every year. For 2009-10 it was increased by $750,000. The budget for this year is $3.2 million.

I certainly appreciate the Member’s comments with working with local associations. Generally the way we work is somebody approaches us for some assistance, like, for example, we contribute to the Inuvik Petroleum Show, we contribute to infrastructure conferences, business conferences, and all of us are members of a number of FPT -- federal/provincial/territorial Ministers -- that meet on a regular basis. I, myself, am invited to about eight or nine of these FPTs every year. We’re all on a rotation for hosting, so every 13 years we get the

opportunity to host a conference in your home province. A lot of them are so big that we haven’t been able to host them here, but certainly we help in that regard.

Otherwise, it’s very difficult for us to pay for non-residents to travel to the Northwest Territories. So generally it’s in the form of assisting with the organizing and planning.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Your final supplementary, Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Although the Minister said he thought it was a great idea at the beginning, it still sounds like he’s kind of saying no. I think this is a great opportunity, and I’m not talking about paying people’s way, I’m talking about providing a financial reward to those associations when they actually convince a national group to come up. I think there’s a significant amount of value here and I think some research would be valuable. So I’d like to get the Minister’s commitment to actually conduct some research into this area to find out if there are opportunities for us to expand our ability to convince local associations to convince national and international bodies to come to the Northwest Territories to hold conferences. Let’s bring in some new money. Let’s get it spread around the Northwest Territories, Mr. Speaker.

Certainly, Mr. Speaker, we’re prepared to do that. We are working with the NWT Tourism Association. They are introducing a conference planner that should be ready by mid-November in preparation for the Canadian Society of Association Society Executive show in Toronto, which we can use that to attract conferences. Certainly we are quite prepared to look at ways to attract more conferences to the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to thank the Member for the question. Mr. Speaker, this 2009 and 2010 is year three of phase two of the action plan that the Member has spoken of. Thus far we have spent $800,000 under this action plan. Some of the monies have gone for shelter stabilization enhancement funds for $340,000, non-shelter regional funding which is to support communities that do not have shelters for $304,000. We have provided funding to YWCA to do an evaluation of the program and also about $45,000 has gone to support children who witness abuse. As well, $100,750 for protocol implementation and development, which the Member has spoken about in her statement. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thanks to the Minister for that information. I guess I would like to know we are in year three. We are looking at two more years. I think the Minister is well aware, and I think she probably agrees with me, that family violence is a huge issue in our Territory and we need to do everything we can to minimize it. There is presumably an update on the family violence, the Action Plan Against Family Violence, Phase Two. When will we be able to see what is going to happen beyond year three? When are we going to get an indication of what is going to happen in years four and five? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We plan to continue to invest for year four and five. I believe in the last business plan process we have just gone through, we have shown the increase of funding in both years. I don’t think I could reveal the details of that, because that is going to be debated in the House in the next spring.

Mr. Speaker, I do want to let the Member know that the Family Violence Action Plan is, and continues to be, one of the priorities of this government. It received continuous funding under the Strategic Initiatives committee, Building our Future committee work that we have been doing. As well, increasing support and services in this area is a part of the Foundation for Change Action Plan that I have reviewed with the committee and that we will be releasing next week. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thanks to the Minister. It is good to hear that it sounds as though the funding is going to remain. I am hoping that that funding would be increased, because, again, as I said, family violence is a huge issue for us.

The Coalition Against Family Violence is a really effective organization. I would like to ask the Minister the proposals, the strategic initiatives that this government is funding and supporting, have those been discussed with the coalition? Is the

coalition in agreement with putting the funding into the particular areas that the Minister is suggesting will be coming that we can’t talk about yet? Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, there are answers to two questions the Member asked. Mr. Speaker, there will be an increase in funding for the next two years. For 2010-11 I can tell the Member that the funding will be increased by $220,000 -- that is from what it was last year -- and then the year five, it will be increased further from next year, which would be increased from last year. My point being, the funding will continue to increase. We are making increasing investment. I just don’t want to reveal the numbers.

Secondly, Mr. Speaker, I think, as the Member has stated, this Family Violence Action Plan is a government plan, but it has been prepared in collaboration of the Coalition Against Family Violence. Our GNWT is part of that partner of the coalition. A large part of the coalition’s work is reflected in the plan. There are certain tasks that they have asked us to do and that is reflected in the funding that the money we have spent that I have already indicated in the House today. Yes, we work very closely with the coalition. We support the work of the coalition. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Final supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.

Thanks to the Minister. I appreciate that the funding is going to go up. I appreciate that the coalition is being listened to.

One of the things that I found, in looking at the information that was available on the action plan, is that it is referenced in a number of GNWT websites. I guess if we don’t have specific information to reference, there needs to be a little bit more indication that this is year three, the activity through years four and five are coming and the site is going to be updated. I found it a little confusing. I would like to ask the Minister if that is something that she and the other departments could consider. Thank you.