Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think that we do have to seriously look at the capital investment in this portfolio, especially in the area of tourism and parks. I think that, if anything, we, as government, have basically let this department down by the lack of capital investment that we put into the area of tourism and parks, especially for the Northwest Territories when we look at the economic sector when it comes to tourism and the increased amount of road traffic we’re seeing. We have more tourists and on the Dempster Highway we’re seeing more and more RVs coming up the Dempster from Whitehorse. Most of the tourists are from Europe off of direct flights between Frankfurt, Germany, and Whitehorse in the Yukon, where we’re seeing a lot of European tourists. Again, I think a lot of facilities that we have designed in the Northwest Territories were not really designed for that type of road traffic.

I believe that we do, as a government, have to really seriously make some major capital investment in the area of parks, and more

importantly, the other parks that we established up and down our highway systems, especially for the amount of road traffic we are seeing in the area of tourism on all our highways, except the challenge of travelling Highway No. 7. I think, if anything, if that highway was in the shape that it should be, we would probably see more increase in road traffic on that highway.

Again, one thing that we need to very much look at is how we develop the capital planning process for tourism and parks. Most of the capital we do in the area of highways is building infrastructure based on a 20-year needs survey looking at actual replacement costs. I’d like to ask the Minister, in light of the lack of capital investment we’ve put into this area, what can we do to make more investment to improve or, basically, bring in more tourism revenues. More importantly, how can we make better use of those facilities that we have by bringing them to a better standard than they’re presently at compared to other jurisdictions such as the Yukon, B.C. or Alberta, in regard to their park facilities? I’d like to ask the Minister what are we doing to improve our image by way of the road traffic or RV tourists and, more importantly, having the facilities to accommodate them. Thank you.