Mr. Speaker, Great Slave Lake is the everyday workplace of a proud community of northern fishers who work tirelessly to harvest some of the best tasting fish in Canada and deliver it year round to the marketplace.

Great Slave Lake represents a huge and sustainable resource. The product offerings are excellent and the stock is healthy and well managed. Yet, most of the fish available to NWT residents in grocery stores and on restaurant menus is imported from southern Canada or elsewhere.

The government’s NWT Economic Opportunities Strategy highlighted the importance of both revitalizing our territory’s fishing industry and encouraging and growing domestic and export markets for NWT products.

In January the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment took a step towards addressing both of these elements of our grassroots economy with the introduction of a marketing and awareness campaign aimed at promoting domestic sales of fresh fish from Great Slave Lake.

The Fresh Fish from Great Slave Lake logo and brand was officially launched at a highly successful simultaneous media event held at the Hay River Super A and Yellowknife Direct Charge Co-op.

In addition to supporting direct sales by industry fishers and NWT storeowners, the new logo and marketing campaign will be used by restaurant owners to promote fresh Great Slave Lake fish on menus.

Mr. Speaker, to further improve opportunities in commercial fishing, we are working with NWT

fishers to find ways to establish effective product distribution systems and ensure security of supply.

Under the Northern Food Development Program, we are working to advance capital, freight subsidies and additional market supports to Great Slave Lake fishers that will allow them to better and more effectively distribute their product to consumers.

It is important to highlight that this program also applies to other fisheries in the territory. For example, one of the crown jewels of the NWT fishery is the pickerel fishery in Kakisa. This fish is highly sought after in both domestic and export markets. We will soon be meeting with producers in the community to determine how to adapt our marketing program to meet their needs and generate greater returns for the community.

We are also developing an entrant strategy to attract new fishers from inside and outside of the NWT to our industry, and we are looking to make key investments to construct a new export grade plant and to help our current fishers modernize their operations

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Mr. Speaker, growing the economy is an important part of creating a prosperous territory that gives NWT residents the opportunity to support themselves and their families. We believe that our fishery is an area in which we can realize significant economic growth and we are acting to stimulate a new era of self-sufficiency for the NWT’s fishery, rebuilding it with new markets, new fishers and new infrastructure to return it to the leading economic contributor it once was. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.