Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d like to welcome the Minister and delegation here today. I do have some general comments, Madam Chair. I am going to try not to repeat too many things that were said by my colleagues. If I do, it’s probably only to earmark that there is some general concern and I think it’s important for the Minister and team to be aware of.

There is no doubt that business in general in the Northwest Territories is going through a transitional change. A lot of businesses are struggling out there, so I do always encourage the department and the Minister to find the right means in fairness and transparency as businesses start to evolve and develop. I see a bit of that in this budget, but the overall temperature is one in which I think we have to put a lens on that subject.

The last time we sat here and talked about ITI, we had a number of initiatives that were ongoing. In fact, I did a quick recap here. We had two mineral and petroleum resource initiatives, we had five energy initiatives, and we had two economic diversification supporting initiatives. I guess the question I have is: Do we have too many things on the go? Do we have too many strategies that are intertwined and competing for one another and clouding the water? Do we have competing priorities as a result of all these initiatives? I guess the big picture is: Who sorts all this out? Are we making the right investment with the right budget?

In essence, I find as a Member, trying to have a sobering eye on what’s going on here, there’s a bit of a mess and quite a bit of confusing information out there. When you add the element of what I call the gatekeeper, at least what we know as the gatekeeper of all these initiatives and strategies, we have the Ministers Energy Coordinating and Climate Change Committee, which is a mouthful in itself, but MECC for short for those of us in the House who were talking about MECC.

I can tell you that the coin phrase for this committee, because of what I said earlier, we like to sometimes refer to it as a confusion through diffusion committee. I say that with no disrespect, but with so many things on the go, again, we need clarity as we move forward with all these efforts here.

We had the long-awaited charrette and some of us were participants and stakeholders working with groups and we did read the report on it. What do we do now with the results of this charrette? Do we have an action plan? Is there an implementation plan? Is there a budget? There are still a lot of unanswered questions. The charrette was used as a means last time we did this as a panacea of change in the energy questions that this House

had, and now that we’ve got this charrette done, we’ve got the report done, there seems to be a lack of where do we go to the next level.

The federal budget pledged $12.3 million over two years and this is the second of two years to continue the assessment of diamonds in the North, to the renewal of the Diamond Valuation and Royalty Assessment Program, and it’s important to note that this initiative was not mentioned in this budget and I would probably ask later on to the Minister as to why.

On the subject of diamonds and diamond manufacturing, the Minister has well known – I brought this issue up quite often here in the House already – I’m gravely concerned that we do have a Diamond Framework Policy which talks about some of the basic tools or fundamentals for resurgence of this industry, but by and large my thoughts are that we are not doing enough to protect the brand, especially the polar bear brand in our certification process. The overall framework with how we deal with rough diamonds in the North so that we truly can be a world leader once again in the secondary diamond industry, and I do challenge the Minister and his department to consider, and I’m sure there will be further and future dialogue on this as the weeks progress.

This committee and some of my colleagues here have talked many times about resource taxation as a potential revenue for the NWT. Currently, we are not doing this. It’s been talked about, but again, this is not mentioned in the budget or in the budget opening address or the Minister’s opening comments. I think we need to ask those questions why. This is a viable opportunity for revenue generation, and not talking about it, I think, is a disservice to the people of the Northwest Territories.

Socio-economic agreements are in place to protect both mines and also businesses in the Northwest Territories it serves. My concern is what we’ve heard a lot lately about the compliance of these socio-economic agreements when a mine is noncompliant and the mechanisms within the framework of these socio-economic agreements. There are tools in there to help redirect when there is noncompliance, and again, there are still a lot of concerns out there in terms of making companies accountable to the people and to the companies and to the territories they serve. So again, not a lot of mention in any of the opening comments or address, and I think it should be duly noted.

The NWT Hydro Strategy, although if you read the charrette, ranked quite high in the committee’s recommendation, but if you look at the current budget and the current opening address, this is the second year now, in being here 16 months, we still don’t see any conclusive investment or strategy in this budget as a result of this so-called high

ranking. I really challenge the Minister to come up with ways as to address the hydro initiatives that seem to be quite prominent with all the experts that we have here that consults with the Territories as well as with the Minister’s office.

Finally, I want to just focus a lens on tourism. If we look at the investments that we do in our tourism, the current budget of $4.4 million, even though we looked at a $600,000 increase in this year’s budget – and I have to say thank you – pales in comparison with what any other jurisdiction in Canada is investing in tourism. Even our closest neighbour to the west, Yukon, is spending almost twice as much as we are, if not more. What’s further boggling to the mind is the fact that these investments, there is a quantifiable return on our investment, and that quantifiable return is in the form of GDP. These are quantifiable statistics that are provided from the government themselves. What’s very concerning is that we know, very well, that investment of $4 million translates to over $100 million of GDP. So again, simple math, there’s a 20 to 1 relationship in our investment to profit, and I can tell you if I had that return on my own RRSP portfolio, that would be great.

I think we’ve got a huge opportunity here to look at all the means necessary that we need to put into tourism, and although we see a small increase, you may hear from many Members here about taking a look at that in the budget and we’re hoping through supplementation and supps that we can look at increasing that amount for tourism, because it truly is one of the incredible revenue streams that this government has yet underutilized in many of our comments that you’ll hear probably later today.

So, Madam Chair, those are just some of my high points. I do have more details as we get into this ITI budget. Thank you.