Thank you, Mr. Chair. Our tourism industry has indicated they have a clear preference for departmental resources to be used to support operators with workshops, training and product development. Also, the protection of client deposits is better done through the use of credit cards.

In our opinion, the Tourist Deposit Assurance Program was created to boost confidence in the tourism industry but in actuality we feel that the program has had the opposite effect, because it shows that the government does not have confidence in the NWT tourism industry because they’re assuming that this industry will fail. In our view, that’s why we feel it should be changed. Thank you.