Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m happy to see the Minister making some strong efforts in taking care of the opportunities that are in the Sahtu region and the development of some of the business opportunities that could take some presence in regard to the, oil and gas Canol shale play in the Sahtu region.
The Minister is looking at some partnerships within ITI and there are many types of partnerships. I look forward to seeing where there are some various levels of different types of partnerships. We have partnerships with oil and gas, partnerships with the community, with Aboriginal businesses, with northern businesses and different partnerships that would promote community self-reliance.
As my colleague indicated, one of them is agriculture. In the Hay River area they have a lot of chickens and eggs. That’s something that I really support. Every store in the Northwest Territories, hopefully, in five years should be having these Polar Eggs on their shelves and we should buy from the North. I would like to see some type of measurement.
When the Minister talks about community self-reliance, I’d like to see some type of initiative that would have the Norman Wells potatoes, for example. In five years we should be filling half of our potato shelves in our Northern Co-op Stores or Northern Stores. That would promote community self-reliance and promote the development of our most valuable resources, which is our people. So it’s things like that that I look forward to the Minister providing good quality programs and services that would obtain these highly achievable results, It could happen. So I look forward to the Minister in that area.
The Minister wants to promote and support the Northwest Territories. We are no different than him and his department. We also want to do it. We saw that in Vancouver. It was a very good job. We also saw that recently in Ottawa, where the North has been promoted as a place to potentially address dollars in our economy, our resources. This, in turn, supports local businesses and people in our small communities.
I guess what we look at is the economic prosperity that the North could have. It’s overwhelming when you look at the prosperity and the wealth in the Northwest Territories. One of the obstacles that we need to look at through the economic area is the infrastructure. It’s no surprise to the Minister that when you look at a region that has gained some attraction in oil and gas and the oil companies are going for the money in my region, we need to look at some much improved infrastructure. We should talk to some other Ministers to see this come to fruition. However, I support the Minister in creating
some of the economic prosperity in the Northwest Territories.
At the same time I’m saying that, the Minister is very cognizant of the sustainable development, the renewable resource development in the areas of conservation and the protection of our environment. The Minister noted that we have the young children. We want a good, strong environment for our children. We value the environment, and that’s where we look at how we balance the protection but also the opportunity for our children to make a living off our land. That’s where the Minister is going to be going. I look forward to some of his discussions and ideas as to how we do this. That’s exciting.
I think he has some viewpoints that need to be shared with us sometime in the future as to having a paper that would protect our environment, protect our pristine area through the Protected Areas Strategy, through our land use plans. I’ve been working with this colleague, ENR, and how do we have both. How do we use both to our most beneficial opportunity for sustaining ourselves as a young, developing territory in the Northwest Territories? I ask the Minister to come with us with some of your thoughts so we can have a good discussion.
The last point I want to ask the Minister is that I look for avenues and opportunities where you could see the North being promoted, utilizing what we have here with our culture, with our language and with the diamonds. I think you did a good job of utilizing the diamonds in the southern part of the North. When you go down south, they always talk about the polar bear diamonds. They’ve branded well. People are starting to say they want the polar bear diamonds. So utilizing and marketing those key marketing strategies that will sell the North to the southern people.
I guess I want to end off with the Minister looking at tourism, tourism in areas where we don’t yet have an all-weather road. So how do we promote? Because it will be a while before we build an all-weather road. So how do we promote small communities like the ones in the Sahtu or any other small communities that we represent? How do we get tours into those communities knowing that there is the high cost of flights, accommodations might not be up to the standards that typical tourists like, and not enough things to do? Is that something that we just have to face saying, you know what, guys, we can only attract 5 percent of the tourists, and the next 80 percent of the tourists are going to be here in Yellowknife because it is just the way the market is? We can’t keep on saying we’ll try each community. We know that’s not going to happen.
There are only so many people that can visit Deline. The world’s biggest trout was caught in Deline, 85 pounds. I don’t see any tourist marketing on that. Surely we can’t be that ignorant of the fact
that that is something we should use to attract people. Eighty-five pounds, the largest world record trout caught, but I don’t see much tourism attraction and marketing of that, or Great Bear Lake being the birthplace of ice hockey, or the biggest muskox was shot in Norman Wells.
We seem to be marketing different areas or the Nahanni on the river. We have to start marketing some of those, or the Canol. It’s considered the world’s…(inaudible)… I think we have to have some selection of our marketing in that area. That is what I wanted to ask the Minister. When you look at marketing, I asked him if he would look at the whole North and focus on some of those key areas that we have in the Northwest Territories. I’m only speaking of the Sahtu. I think we have some good things we could market, but we also have to be realistic on how much we can market. I look forward to going to the Minister and his budget. Thank you.