Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I’m pleased to take the opportunity for some general comments on Industry, Tourism and Investment and some of the initiatives that we as Regular Members have been seeking in the department, especially being responsive enough to see that need of increasing our tourism budget up by $600,000 for this fiscal year. I’d sure like to have the department utilize those dollars, because I know that some of the initiatives, not only in the department, but along with NWT Tourism and some of their budgeting, we can certainly double their budgets and thereby have more of an impact in getting tourists to the Northwest Territories. In fact, continue to provide international exposure to our spectacular North. I think all Members saw that and I’m glad that government agreed with that.
I think I did do a Member’s statement, as well, on an initiative. One of the initiatives is to have
somebody like Martin Strel, the Big River Man, swim the whole of the Mackenzie River. I really believe that would garner us lots of international attention, and in particular because he is followed by international film crews on the National Geographic channel and a lot of his films end up at a lot of the major film festivals throughout the world. When that happens, then they can see the beauty of our North. He was famed, of course, for swimming the longest rivers only to show the pollution in those rivers, but here’s an opportunity to show the pristineness of our great Dehcho, the Mackenzie River. I certainly can continue to press that.
In terms of providing ease of tourism to the North, I’ve been up here time and time again speaking about the Dehcho loop and, in particular, my favourite two words, Highway 7, only because it’s those roads that provide a gateway to the Northwest Territories from BC and the loop extends over, exiting in High Level or vice versa. They could enter around Hay River, the Alberta border, and exit out by Fort Liard on the BC border. A lot of tourists do see the value in that, but they’re well aware about Highway No. 7 so they’re often phoning businesses in Enterprise, or businesses in Fort Simpson, or even the owners at Checkpoint Services that still remain there about the condition of Highway No. 7: Is it worth it taking my $400,000 motorhome on this loop and around Highway No. 7?
Tourists don’t want to do the same road twice. If they’re driving all the way from Hay River to Fort Simpson, they don’t want to return on the same route, they want to see something new and different. So that’s why I continue to urge investment into Highway No. 7 and giving us the angle, of course, of only increasing tourism, which will benefit the North and there’s return for our money that way, as well, as well as providing a gateway to Fort Simpson for the travelling public and tourists to see the Nahanni National Park Reserve and the beauty that’s out there as well.
So we need continued support for that and continued support for our micro-industries in arts and crafts. There’s lots of people in the smaller communities sewing and beading and we’ve got to provide access to their products. I think a lot of them do sell it to the Fort Liard Craft Centre. By far there’s no big entry points like that in Fort Simpson. So it would be nice to capitalize on that micro-market and support that in Fort Simpson as well.
Recently, during my last visit to Fort Liard, I was speaking with Chief Harry Deneron and he spoke about his last visit to Fort Nelson. He was at the airport and saw three planeloads of workers from down south servicing the northern BC gas and oil fields there. He was saying, why aren’t you using our northern workers. It’s only because our base of
workers has been exhausted, or the last time we had a huge training program was in the ‘70s and most of those people are now retiring or already retired.
I urge the Minister to work with his counterparts in Education, Culture and Employment about coming up with a different kind of training plan to train a good workforce for the North so that even the people who work in northern BC and northern Alberta look to the North for those resources and skills that they need. As it is now, it’s not fair and we really have to address that.
I’m working with my colleague from the Sahtu in making a case that the Sahtu development, the shale play there is a special economic zone and the benefit there for me is that we can finally see the development of the Mackenzie Highway north of Wrigley become a priority, not only of his department but of our government, in the next couple of years. I don’t want to take away from other regions, but once we start making the case that yes, we should develop the road north, it will provide a gateway to the resources that are there and, yes, we can start investing in it and, hopefully, get some federal backing to and invest in finally completing that road north of Wrigley up to Norman Wells. Once again, we can also focus on long-term strategies of completing it all the way to the Dempster Highway and, once again, create another tourism loop throughout the North. I think it would be incredible if we try to focus on that and see that eventuality, where someone can drive up the Mackenzie Valley and then make another loop, this time through the Yukon. I would certainly like to see that as a long-term strategy.
I really appreciate the continued investment in hunting and trapping for our children and the current harvesters out there. I’ll continue to support that investment.
That ends my general comments.