Not only are we seeing an influx of pickers from western Canada who are showing up in the Northwest Territories, but through the work of the department we are trying to get local people interested in this harvest. That’s why we’re putting on the workshops. That’s why we’re doing the walking tours. It is going to have an economic impact. The pickers who do show up here are going to eat at restaurants, they are going to stay in our parks and campgrounds, they are going to buy gas and supplies from local stores. There is going to be an economic benefit to having them here, but we are trying our best to ensure that the benefits of the morel harvest this summer accrue to people in the Northwest Territories, pickers here in the Northwest Territories.
We’ve had a great deal of interest. I mentioned in my Minister’s statement that 1,200 residents attended the workshops here in the NWT. Our belief here is there is going to be a very good harvest once the rain hits next week and we will see some economic benefit. We haven’t, to my knowledge, done a complete cost-benefit analysis on what it would be. We don’t really know, as I mentioned in my Minister’s statement, and there are a lot of variables. Things like weather, supply and demand, a number of variables there. We haven’t done that, but once this morel season is over, perhaps we could take a look and try to quantify what the economic uptake was on the harvest this summer. The most important thing is we are trying to get local people out to harvest the morels.
Last March we had second reading given to a proposed amendment to the Forest Management Act, which would allow the Minister of ENR to make regulations in respect to the harvest of timber forest products, which would include mushrooms. This is moving forward as well. We have to concentrate on the local economic uptake on this. That’s local people picking morel mushrooms. Thank you.