Thank you, Madam Chair. There is just one of the items that haven't been mentioned as I listened to my colleagues. I won’t spend a lot of time repeating the other items already mentioned, but there were some pretty good ones.

The issue that I noticed had been missed – and if it had been spoken on, I apologize for that description – is hotel tax. We all know it goes through this department. The Hotel Association has been working quite diligently to bring this initiative to the forefront. The fact is the hotel tax, if implemented properly through our Municipal and Community Affairs in partnership with communities at large, that would enable communities, if they felt it necessary and it meets their objectives, some flexibility on raising some money for tourism or added value services in their community.

Quite often, as we all know, communities will put in requests for recreational coordinators, event coordinators, et cetera. There never seems to be enough money, but the Hotel Association, from the Yellowknife point of view, has articulated a concern and said, well, whoa, we would like to do some conference planning and some development over the long haul. This would enable source money to be able to do something like this.

There are other communities such as, if I understand it correctly, Fort Smith. I think there has been talk now, muttering around the idea of a community event planner. It is meant to be a dynamic way of allowing communities to meet some of their objectives and certainly their goals, which again, enabled through MACA legislation, that would allow a particular community to choose to take on a type of authority and implement it.

The important key element of this hotel tax is it becomes a situation where a community itself may want to decide, well, this is what we want. This is not prescribed. Every community wouldn’t have to follow suit. They would be allowed to do it at their will.

The only particular issue, as I mentioned, that I think has been missed is the hotel tax issue. I think that we have now progressed to a point where the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs should be working its hardest to help enable our communities to do the work that they want to do and not find ways to restrict them.

Madam Chair, that is the only issue I plan to raise at this particular time. However, I may be stirred to raise concern on other issues as we approach those pages. Thank you.