Thank you, Mr. Chair. Our territory is endowed with scenic territorial parks in all its five regions. The government has committed to providing quality public tourism facilities at territorial parks throughout the Northwest Territories. These parks are great assets for tourism and many tourists make use of the services and facilities provided at these parks. Currently, we maintain 35 territorial parks including 14 wayside or day-use areas which are established to provide for the enjoyment or convenience of the travelling public. Many of our wayside parks are situated around areas of scenic value or points of interest along highways. We continue to improve the territorial parks experience and annually invest funds to maintain and/or upgrade facilities. The government does not currently have plans to establish any new wayside parks or build any additional buildings and territorial wayside parks due to little demand, nor is there O and M to service existing wayside parks infrastructure. Our tourism road traffic occurs predominantly during the summer months. The large majority of users during the winter months are residents or commercial traffic, not tourists travelling to the Northwest Territories. As a government, we are committed to improving and modernizing our parks infrastructure and we’ll continue to invest in maintaining existing parks. To help ensure the safety of the travelling public, the Department of Transportation of the Government of the Northwest Territories has added additional pull-outs along the highway system and made improvements to existing pull-out areas. These pull-outs allow travellers to rest, stop for personal health issues, and enjoy their surroundings safely. The department constructs and maintains pull-outs with the intention of having one major rest area every one 150 kilometres along the highway network and a pull-out every 50 kilometres. The Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment is responsible for wayside parks, which are established to provide for the enjoyment or convenience of the travelling public and around scenic points of interest. The departments do not have any plans to build any emergency shelters along highways due to the costs of construction and associated ongoing O and M requirements, as well as the limited demand for shelters. In the past, we have had emergency shelters and it promoted vandalism and other misuse of the shelters. Mr. Chair, I would like to move an amendment to have a Committee motion. If I could read it out, I will proceed to do so.
Bob McLeod on Committee Motion 5-18(2): Tabled Document 1-18(2): Proposed Mandate Of The Government Of The Northwest Territories, 2016-2019, Replacement Of Text Regarding Public Tourism Facilities, Carried
In the Legislative Assembly on February 23rd, 2016. See this statement in context.
Committee Motion 5-18(2): Tabled Document 1-18(2): Proposed Mandate Of The Government Of The Northwest Territories, 2016-2019, Replacement Of Text Regarding Public Tourism Facilities, Carried
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
February 23rd, 2016
See context to find out what was said next.