Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank the Members for those general comments. With regard to some of the specific comments that Mr. Abernethy raised, we certainly agree that we need to promote investment in the smaller communities and I think that’s evidenced by putting on the EDO in Ulukhaktok. I think the air rates were killing us, so it was a lot better to have somebody right there to maximize the funding. I think it was when Senator Eggleton came and talked about the anti-poverty, and that certainly cemented to me that job creation was a very large factor in reducing poverty. Certainly the more investment we can do in creating employment, the better it is.
On the investment with SEED, that’s certainly one of our objectives with SEED, is to create more small business in small communities. We are working very hard at that. There are still some challenges we have to address in terms of applications and approval rates for issuing and approving loans in communities, but we’re working on pushing more of those authorities out to the communities.
Arts and crafts, we are talking about artisans, not performers. Right now ITI has the responsibility for artisans and ECE has the responsibility for performers but we work very closely together to maximize that.
The film industry we have spent money on consulting. I think we have the report now. We’ll be meeting with the film producers and expect to finalize and table the report in May. Our expectation is that the money that we’ve identified now will go over the years as we get more and more into that field.
Hotel tax, that was my understanding as well, was that we would find a way to have the communities decide and also invest the money as the money is collected within the communities. We’re continuing to work with the NWT Association of Communities and Finance. My understanding of the process is that we have to go through the roundtable process and work to get this through the mill or the sausage maker or whatever they call it.
Local harvesting, it’s very important. In the past we used to value the results of harvesting at about $50 million. If the harvesting wasn’t there and you had to buy all the food at the grocery stores that’s how much extra it would cost. Now with division, we’re probably looking at closer to $25 million or $30 million, but local harvesting is still very important
and the more self-sufficient we can get, the better it is.
On red tape, we used to have a red tape directorate. I think it was in the 13
th
Assembly. They
ran out of things to do, I don’t know if they ran out of red tape to cut or I think it was more through cost reductions that the directorate was closed and the responsibility for reducing red tape was passed out to the departments. So each department is responsible for that. As a government we believe that with devolution, overall red tape will be reduced significantly, and of course we’re promoting the implementation of BizPaL throughout the Northwest Territories. We’re working very closely with the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.
On the comments on Avalon Canadian Zinc, other Nico Fortune Minerals, those kinds of projects, I think that devolution we’ve said many times is a game changer and without devolution we would have to just watch the federal government deal with it. With devolution we can now go and talk to these proponents to see what it would take to advance the projects and we can have much more hands-on approach. I think that’s a better way to go.
With regard to Mr. Ramsay’s comments, promoting NWT investment, and I know it’s been a big priority and I’ve been very grateful for the Members that have travelled along and helped promote the Northwest Territories. I think it’s been very worthwhile and gone a long ways.
The regulatory process is still an issue and whenever we go to mining meetings that’s one of the big concerns. They always compare us to Nunavut and Yukon and our regulatory process. The issues they need are some fiscal incentives. They’re finding it very difficult to access capital for exploration. Those kinds of things.
The Mackenzie Pipeline, that’s, as we’ve gone up and down the valley talking to communities, quite a few communities say, well, when we say do you think we should be promoting the local economy instead of promoting the Mackenzie Pipeline, quite a few communities say to them the Mackenzie Pipeline is promoting local economy.
More money for tourism. I know we’d always like to have more money and we think that if we had more money we could probably develop more products and have more visitation, but we realize the fiscal realities that we have to work under.
NWT parks again is, thank God we have beautiful, spectacular opportunities and experiences that can be developed and we will continue to work on that.
On expanding or extending the runway, ITI did lead and commission a study and we held a number of stakeholder meetings and consultations. The conclusion was that the primary local business didn’t support extending our runway. They felt that the business plan wasn’t there. They weren’t
prepared to subsidize or spend money on a runway where they didn’t see the return on investment. That’s about as far as it got. We’re prepared to revisit it as we go along and as the economy continues to improve.
The money for SEED, that program has been oversubscribed pretty well since we instituted it. The more money we put into it the more it goes into the smaller communities.
The Electricity Rate Review, we’re starting to see the results of that. People are starting to receive their bills. So in the thermal communities they are benefitting.
Dollars for business start-ups, this is an area that we’re continuing to promote and we think that becoming an entrepreneur is a very excellent way to go. I think there are opportunities we can promote.
MLA Jacobson, Ulukhaktok was quite an eye-opener to go and see the impact that the opening of the print shop and carving centre had on the community and all the thanks and how grateful the people were and I think it is really going to be good for the community.
I talked about SEED already, tourism, fish and meat. I think that with increased investment in local wildlife committees and community harvesters, people in our communities that have to go further to get caribou will now be able to use that funding for that. It’s been quite a while since we had put money into that program. The outfitting, I think Jim Shockey -- I saw one of his promotions on TV -- would be excellent.
On the energy side, the residual heat, Arctic Energy Alliance and EnerGuide, every time we meet with a federal Minister we tell them that one of the biggest mistakes was they got rid of their Housing Efficiency Program. I thought that was an excellent program. If they wanted to do something for Canadians, they should reinstitute that. Offshore Mackenzie Pipeline, we are participating in the offshore review of the Mackenzie Pipeline. We are still waiting for the Order-in-Council from the federal government as to whether they’re going to approve the pipeline or not.
LNG terminal, I am not sure. I know we looked at economics of doing it in Alaska. The economics up there weren’t that great, but they have a different kind of natural gas there that needs to be cleaned up and is a lot further from an ocean port. I would be interested in looking at what the economics would be for something like that in Tuk. I agree a deep sea port would be very good for that area.
MLA Bromley, 3 percent growth is pretty hard to live with, but it is a commitment that we made as a government. I think that we are trying to stick to that.
On the Gahcho Kue, we will be continuing with the diamond mine socio-economic model. On the SEED program, I think that SEED has been in place now for four years so we probably have enough information to be able to do an evaluation of some sort. I talked about the film industry, local food production and I remember we went out to visit one of the local homes that had really gotten into food production. We talked about developing a food policy. I think that is still something we want to do but we are running out of time, so maybe it will be something we put on a transition arrangement with the next government.
Geoscience, we have been fairly successful getting money out of CanNor, the federal government in trying to protect the Arctic. They have invested $100 million in geoscience. We will probably have a debate on it. In my view, for every dollar you spend on geoscience you get $5 spent on exploration and $150 spent on development. I think that is a pretty good return.
Prospectors, I think we want to do something with devolution. I think that the devolution AIP, I think that we can look at doing something next year.
Electricity review, it is something we will have to continue to debate that. I think that we will see in two years. I think that, in our mind, we put ourselves in a better position to deal with that two years from now, as the media have raised.
The Lutselk’e mini-hydro, we can discuss that. The federal government, we have been pushing them pretty hard and we are trying to get a response, a commitment from them.
The dollar revenues, I would have to check our revenues. I know that our parks revenues have been going up and I’d to look at what our other revenue sources are.
Tourism, that’s something that we would like to continue to invest in and grow. The Protected Areas Strategy, we are a participant. We are sponsoring the Five Fingers/Five Fish Lakes in Jean Marie River.
Land use framework, we are working with the different departments to develop a land use framework. We are leading it through the Managing This Land Committee. The mandates of ITI and ENR, that was set by the Assembly, so we work with that. I already talked about the airport and the Mackenzie Pipeline. Those are my responses to the general comments, Mr. Chairman.