Mr. Speaker, former Minister Todd was contracted for up to $48,000, at $1,500 a day, 32 days of work. The FAA requires “that amounts claimed are correct as to quantities and prices for goods or services provided.” So the law required the Executive to verify documentation of the exact services provided. So where’s the invoice that says how many days, even, Mr. Todd worked?

For what I demand is the last time: will the Premier prove the Executive obeyed the law and produce the documents that were verified to approve payment, or was this actually a one-time $48,000 schmooze fee? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. I’ll caution Members to not refer to Members that are not in the House. Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Member is now not a rookie anymore. He’s been around this Assembly long

enough and he’s been digging up information for quite some time and making strong suggestions out there or language that we can get on and debate and challenge each other on. He’s not satisfied with the information we’ve given him. There was no schmooze fest, as the Member is suggesting. Contracts were in place; meetings did occur, and a number of them. He’s not satisfied with the information we’ve given him. I am sorry he’s not satisfied, but I don’t know if there’s anything I can do that will satisfy him short of having him sit beside me in meetings and take the notes for me. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Yes, I appreciate the vote of confidence on the Premier that I’m coming along as an MLA, and I apologize for mentioning names here.

Mr. Speaker, the Auditor General’s report that was tabled yesterday in the House noted the need for some serious tune-up of our contracting services, unlike the Premier’s opinion of things, so these questions are not frivolous questions that I’m dreaming up or anything like that. I’ve asked very specific questions repeatedly. So let me offer my third one, specifically, and I will happily shut up, Mr. Speaker, if I get a response that stands up.

As this House knows, the Executive let two sole-source contracts to two contractors at the same time for exactly the same services and described each contractor as “uniquely” able to provide the services. My written question asked how this could be, and the question was ignored. Will the Premier, for the first time, explain now how it is possible for two identical services provided to be unique, and if the answer is that these two unique contractors were providing the same service, why was the contract not bid competitively to get the best price? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, in many forms of contracting, best price isn’t necessarily the best work that you want to get. Especially in the critical days of a government coming into power, it wants to ensure that the information it is collecting, the position it is preparing for in meetings, in opening some of those doors, each person can bring their own unique qualities to the table. For example, with our establishing a relationship with the federal government that’s in place, that requires a unique set of capacity and capabilities, and we received that.

When it comes to dealing with industry, as well as some of the bureaucracy in the system, again, the individuals sought for their experience and ability to open doors and set up meetings for us. So those were done, those were contracts that were entered into initially with our government, and we used those at the time when we felt that we needed them. Since then, we’ve established those networks, we’ve established our criteria and

competence with Ministers across the country, whether it is federal, provincial or other territories, and now with that level of confidence and our positions well established, we’ve no need for those contracts. That, as well, shows that with our contracting in place that we did not extend those contracts. Thank you.

Of course, these are just examples. There are many contracts that we could be talking about here and perhaps will in the future. But I’m asking about process here, Mr. Speaker. So I’m asking the Premier what will he do, given the Auditor General’s report and some of the obvious irregularities that we’re raising here in the House, to tune-up this process in a way that gives us the confidence we need, and our public need, that things are being done appropriately and with appropriate documentation. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I understand that response was tabled in this Assembly, our response to the Auditor General’s report, on the initiatives we would undertake to deal with those issues. As well, in remarking to other questions earlier this week, the Financial Administration Act is being reviewed and out of that can flow further changes. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Specifically to increasing the infrastructure to provide for RV parking, I’m pleased to announce to the Member that we are increasing the number of parking sites or camping sites that people with RVs can pull into. We’re also looking or studying the

potential for expanding Fred Henne Park and we’re also looking at whether there are any possibilities out at Prelude Campsite. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, that’s certainly good news. In the riding of Yellowknife Centre there are a lot of small businesses and they certainly rely significantly on this infusion of tourist dollars and, as we all know, the Territory’s economy relies seriously on the infusion of new types of dollars. Could the Minister elaborate a little further to what he means by looking at extending the Fred Henne Territorial Park to accommodate RV tourism, that type of sector? Can he elaborate to basically explain size, what dollar investment and when we can expect something? Thank you.

When I say we’re looking and studying Fred Henne Park, we’re looking at the available land that we have. We’re also looking at how many campsites we can build in there. Once we get all of that information we’ll have to put together a business case so we can come to the Legislative Assembly as part of our business planning process to obtain additional resources so that we can expand our capacity for RV camping. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, as I said in my Member’s statement, Northern House, in my view, is a clear example of hard work and certainly an excellent demonstration of what the North has to offer.

Mr. Speaker, I’ve been highlighting my issue, trying to raise awareness about preparing for RV'ers, and certainly I know the staff working down there are clearly providing excellent examples of how people can get here and things to do. But if all that work is for naught, if we’re not prepared for them, I’d like to find out from the Minister what type of work is being done by Industry, Tourism and Investment to prepare for these types of tourism and hopefully a wave of tourism that may come this summer? Thank you.

We’ve been doing a lot of work and preparing for this invasion of tourists. In 2009-10 we’ve spent resources to upgrade our facilities. We’re planning to do additional work this summer. As well, I should point out that we will be examining opportunities with some of the land claim organizations or land claim, their government or businesses, to see if we can work in partnership with aboriginal governments to identify opportunities in the tourism sector. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I like the phrase of the Minister “preparing for the invasion of tourism,” but I would encourage the Minister not to

count them until he sees the whites of their eyes crossing our border.

But, Mr. Speaker, how do we find out if this investment is working? That’s what I really want to make sure, is that all the investment done at the Northern House and all the work being done to attract tourism, how are linking it to any type of results to ensure that type of investment will be long-term dividends to our northern economy? One dollar spent anywhere in the North helps the whole North, so it’s about a big northern picture. Thank you.

There are a number of ways we can analyze how successful we’ve been at Northern House. One is to impute the value of all of the media coverage that we’ve been getting. We’ve been on major international networks, we are getting a lot of coverage from the tourism media and different newspapers and publications, so that’s one way of imputing value. If we had to pay for all that coverage, it would probably be in the millions of dollars, perhaps in the tens of millions of dollars.

Other ways will depend on how many people come to the Northwest Territories, and we capture that information through our tourism surveys and exit surveys, and I guess we’ll see on the ground. We’ve been getting very positive comments. A lot of people have indicated they’re coming to the Northwest Territories. So that would be how we would determine how successful we were with our campaign at the Olympics. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.

Mr. Chair, my question is to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. I want to ask the Minister in terms of the education issue here. I want to ask the Minister what improvements to education have been made in the Sahtu communities because of the new investments approved through the budget process.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Through the new initiative, we’ve had several meetings on the Aboriginal Student Achievement Initiative and they’ve made some recommendations to our department and we’ve implemented those particular initiatives. Although it may be small, it’s a start. We provide funding to each of the school education councils, so they can deal with enrolment issues, enrolment challenges.

Not only that, Mr. Speaker, we’ve provided a laptop to the grade 12 students and now we’re looking towards next year of providing possibly to grade 11 students and other initiatives along the way that will certainly provide benefits to the students, to the communities and also the community as a whole. So those are the areas that we’re looking at. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, the Minister, in his ministerial statement, talked about education and I also heard some Members talk about the Mentorship Program here. I want to ask the Minister, I’ve been working quite diligently with him over a couple of years to look at a mentorship program in the Sahtu in terms of involving our real teachers in our culture, the elders. How do you get the real teachers into an education system to work with us and the parents? When will the Minister put forth a directive saying elders now have to be involved in our education system?

Mr. Speaker, the amount of funding that we provide to education councils, it’s to their discretion on where to disclose the funds, whether it be to the elders or to the Mentorship Program. Some of the school districts are providing mentorship to improve student attendance using various examples. So it will be up to the Sahtu education council to provide that available information.

Mr. Speaker, although this is a small initiative that we’ve initiated, we are already making progress, we are seeing some changes in student attendance going up a bit. Mr. Speaker, on a going forward basis, this summer we’re going to have a package available from the Aboriginal Student Achievement Initiative and I’m looking forward to implementing that with the support of the Members. So I will be coming back to the Members on an update. Mahsi.