Good evening, colleagues. Before I call for the report of the Committee of the Whole, I wish to note that I have been informed that your wish is to stay late today beyond the daily hour of adjournment. By the authority given to me as Speaker, by Motion 10-17(5), I hereby order you back into Committee of the Whole and authorize you to sit beyond the daily hour of adjournment to consider business before the House and to report as the committee deems appropriate. I would like to ask Mr. Bouchard to take the chair.

I will call the committee to order. We will commence committee once we take a short break.

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Thank you, I’ll call committee back to order. Mr. Ramsay, do you have witnesses to enter into the Chamber?

I do, Mr. Chairman, thank you.

Thank you. Sergeant-at-Arms, escort the witnesses in. Thank you.

Minister Ramsay, I’ll get you to introduce your witnesses one more time for the record, please.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To my left is Peter Vician, the deputy minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment. To my right is Ms. Nancy Magrum, director of shared services, finance and administration. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Ramsay. Continuing on 12-26, activity summary, tourism and parks, grants and contributions, $5.558 million. I have Mr. Bromley followed by Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Really, I just wanted to say I’m happy to see the continuation and, in some cases, expansions in some of the support here, specifically that Tourism Diversification Program. I think we’re having some successes in that area and I’d welcome any evaluation that the department has done on the support provided to date.

I think the sport hunt outfitter and marketing support, I’m assuming this is support to help keep some of the outfitters alive over time, a rough period in our history here and I appreciate the continuation of that.

Finally, the little bump-up there, recognition of the additional costs and success of the Northern Frontier Visitors Centre. I know that’s a modest amount but, again, a great appreciation for that. So I just wanted to mention that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We appreciate the Member’s comments. As far as evaluations go on the Tourism Diversification Program, we can try to get him some evaluation on the success of that funding and I appreciate his comments on the Sport Hunt Outfitter Marketing Support Program that we have. As well, the extra funds for the Northern Frontier Visitors Centre. I know they do a great job here in the capital, supporting the tourism industry. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Ramsay. Next I have on my list Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just have a question with regards to the two contributions at the top of this page, tourism industry contribution and Tourism 2015. They sound remarkably similar. I just wonder if I can get an explanation of the difference between the two. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Deputy Minister Vician.

Thanks to the deputy minister for that. I guess in my effort to make the budget as easy to understand as possible, I’m not sure why we would need two items here. I appreciate that this is a five-year limited time contribution, but I don’t quite understand why we couldn’t add it into the first one – t’s still a contribution to NWT Tourism – and then just reduce the amount if it’s not renewed after the five years, but I’ll leave it at that. Thank you, just a comment.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. I will go back to Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. One thing I meant to get to was on the sport hunt outfitter marketing support. I, and I know other Members, have met with the outfitters in this area and they’re basically edging on bankruptcy because of the loss of caribou. There was some hope that the herd would recover in time to rescue these businesses, and some of them have basically put their lifetime’s worth of savings and investments into the business. It’s now looking like this is not feasible within the timescale that would allow them to recover anything.

Would the Minister be willing to work with these few outfitters, or perhaps he already is, on basically a rescue cleanup operation to maybe work with the charter outfits or whatever to try and bring back whatever is recoverable and allow them to minimize their losses. There’s no question that their losses will be significant regardless of what’s done here, but the government, to some degree, led these businesses and encouraged them to make this charge. They made it and then we left them with a mismanaged resource that’s led to their decline. Recognizing now that the time frame that we’re dealing with is, being realistic, these are not recoverable. Can we help them sort of cap things over the next year and allow them to get on with their lives with as minimum loss as possible?

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Ramsay.

We have, through the Sport Hunt Outfitter Marketing support program, helped those outfitters that have needed some assistance along the way protect the assets that they have out there. We haven’t had any discussion with the group about reclamation or bringing anything back that’s recoverable. That discussion hasn’t taken place.

I appreciate that, and that’s exactly what we had our meetings with the outfitters about, and they were asking if we could ask this question, so I’m asking the Minister, would he be willing to have those discussions? The Minister raises a good point that the reclamation is part of this. There are some environmental liabilities out there and so on, and perhaps there’s another department that’s taking on significant work here, but I think we are talking about helping these businesses which, again, we encouraged, minimize their losses and minimize the impact on the environment and so on.

I understand ENR has had some contact and is working toward that. From our perspective at ITI, we will continue to work with Minister Miltenberger and his staff at ENR to move that along.

Thanks to the Minister for his response to that. Would he commit to keeping committee apprised on this?

Yes, and that would probably end up coming through ENR. I don’t want to speak for ENR, but maybe we’ll just say yes. The Minister is nodding his head yes, so yes.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Page 12-26, tourism and parks, grants and contributions, $5.558 million. Mr. Yakeleya.