Thank you, Mr. O'Reilly. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I read fairly well, and I understand words, but I don't see anything on this page making reference to that. What page is the Member referring to?

Thank you, Minister. Mr. O'Reilly.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. It is page 155, the one that we were just talking about. If I may, thank you, Mr. Chair, if he looks under the expenditure category, chargebacks is the fourth line. The sixth line or whatever is contract services. There is a reduction in expenditures under chargebacks and a fairly significant increase in contract services, so if I could get some explanation? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. O'Reilly. Minister.

Thank you, Minister. Mr. O'Reilly.

Thanks, Mr. Chair, and I appreciate the answer. I just have one other question on 156, if I may. It says regulatory revenue, and then there's professional licence fees and environmental health fees and vital statistics fees. What's our sort of regular cycle for reviewing these and whether there should be any sort of increases even to keep pace with inflation? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. O'Reilly. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, we're committed to doing these reviews every five years. The last review was done in 2013, so we anticipate the next one will be 2018. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister. I see nothing further from Mr. O'Reilly. Do I have any further questions or comments? Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I move that committee defer consideration of estimates for the Department of Health and Social Services at this time. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. There is a motion to defer. The motion is on the floor and is being distributed. The motion is in order and non-debatable. All those in favour? All those opposed?

---Carried

Committee, the consideration of this department has been deferred. I want to thank the Minister and his witnesses. Sergeant-At-Arms, please escort the witnesses from the Chamber. Minister, please take your regular seat. We will continue on with, as agreed, our consideration of the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment. Does the Minister have any opening remarks?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm pleased to present the 2017-2018 Main Estimates for the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment. Overall, the department's estimate proposes a decrease of $4.4 million or 7.3 per cent over the 2016-2017 Main Estimates. These estimates continue to support the GNWT's objectives of ensuring a strong sustainable future for the government and its programs by effectively managing expenditures due to limited revenue growth. The 2017-2018 Main Estimates include an increase of $124,000 from the 2017-2018 Business Plan Review by Standing Committee in September.

This change is primarily due to the reinstatement of the proposed reduction to contribution funding for community transfer initiatives totaling $110,000. The mandate of ITI is to promote economic self-sufficiency through the responsible development of the Northwest Territories mineral and petroleum resources; the development of natural resources industry, including agriculture, commercial fishing, and the traditional economy; and the promotion and the support of tourism, trade and investment businesses in manufacturing and secondary industries to create a prosperous and diverse and sustainable economy for the benefit of all NWT residents.

ITI's 2017-2018 Main Estimates include budget reductions totalling $2.6 million. The department will look for ways to be more effective and efficient with the funds that it has available to ensure programs and services are providing the best value for money for our residents and our businesses.

The 2017-2018 Main Estimates also include new funding, specifically:

● $132,000 to establish a new full-time tourism development officer position for the North Slave region. This increase is in response to the growing number of tourism operators in the North Slave region, supporting the 18th Legislative Assembly's priority to lead economic diversification by investing in tourism.

● $132,000 to establish a new full-time investment and immigration officer position. This investment directly corresponds with our mandate commitment to increase the number of immigrants working in the NWT and increase investment by immigrants by implementing an immigration strategy that prioritizes streamlining application and processes, increasing awareness to immigration programs, and consolidating our administrative supports.

● $51,000 to establish a full-time territorial parks maintenance officer position to allow for winter use of our parks. The position is currently only a seasonal position. The department's 2017-2018 Main Estimates continue to support the priorities of the 18th Legislative Assembly's.

Specific activities in support of these priorities include:

● $4.79 million in total for the Tourism Product Diversification Program, Community Tourism Infrastructure, Tourism Industry Contribution, and Tourism Skills and Development, which aim to support tourism operators and product diversification and expansion into growing markets, contributions to municipalities, NGOs, and Aboriginal governments and organizations to support tourism through infrastructure contributions, NWT Tourism and the development of youth mentorship and community tourism coordinators.

● $3.87 million for the support of entrepreneurs and economic development, which provides a wide range of assistance to businesses and individuals to support and stimulate business development and diversification. It also supports community-based initiatives that stimulate the local economy.

● $3.64 million for the Business Development Investment Corporation and Community Future Contributions to support the economic objectives of the GNWT by encouraging the creation and development of northern businesses.

● $1.59 million for community transfer initiatives which provide funding for economic development officer positions in NWT communities.

● $850,000 for the Northern Food Development Program and Growing Forward 2 to expand the agriculture sector and remove barriers to creating employment and facilitating the development of a northern food production sector. These initiatives provide support to the commercial producers of northern fish, meat, and other food products for sale and consumption in the NWT.

● $155,000 in contributions for the marketing and promotion of the Genuine Mackenzie Valley Fur.

● $225,000 for contributions to support commercial fisheries by offsetting high freight or production costs.

● $400,000 for the mining incentive program that provides contributions and support of mineral exploration in the NWT.

● $100,000 for Aboriginal mineral development support which assists Aboriginal organizations to prepare for and share in the benefits of the mineral development in their area.

That concludes my opening remarks. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister. Do you have any witnesses you would like to bring into the chamber?

I do.

Thank you, Minister. Sergeant-at-Arms, please escort the witnesses into the chamber. Minister, would you please introduce your witnesses to the committee.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. On my left is Julie Mujcin, director of finance for ITI, and on my right is Tom Jensen, deputy minister of ITI. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister. We will begin with opening comments from committee. Committee members are allowed 10 minutes each for their opening comments and then, after the committee has spoken, the Minister will be given 10 minutes to respond and then we will move into the activities. Do I have any general comments on ITI from committee? First I have Mr. Vanthuyne.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just to open up with some general comments. You know, I think that if we're to just maybe touch on a couple of highlights. Of course, I think all of us here believe that clearly the Northwest Territories has some incredible economic development opportunities, especially going forward when we look at the potential for exploration and mining. We also want to look at the potential that we have as a territory to diversify our economy and take advantage of traditional economies that we've once upon a time had robust results from; fisheries is a good example.

We also have, of course, before us many challenges: the high cost of living that keeps increasing; the high cost of power production that we have in this territory; and, of course, the limited road infrastructure that we have. We have also these challenges that are before us in terms of continuing to modernize legislation and whether that's on lands or resources. We also, of course, have world markets that we have to compete with when it comes to a number of our resources that we have available to the world.

Low commodity prices right now are having a major effect on, in particular, the oil and gas industry in the Northwest Territories, and we see that now throughout the Sahtu and the Beaufort Delta, and this is all leading to the opportunity for our small communities, and it's our small communities that we need to create jobs for.

Further, as it relates to potential opportunities on some work that we've done recently. Of course, the near opening of the Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk Highway and eventually the road to Whati will also present some pretty good economic development and some good diversification opportunities. We need to create some certainty and public confidence in our regulatory system, as I touched on before, and it's not only to do with major project approvals but it's also to do with how we allow our new up-and-coming entrepreneur and business opportunities to take place, and, of course, supporting mineral claims and exploration opportunities.

Lastly, I think one of the things that I want to touch on is that this government, and in particular this department, needs to make investment to improve the climate for entrepreneurs and small businesses, and one of the main focuses in that area is going to have to be with regard to reducing red tape and redundancy. So those are just some of the general observations and opening comments, Mr. Chair. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Vanthuyne. Next I have Mr. Testart.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think that this is a good example of one of our budgets where we see a lot of numbers in the Minister's opening comment that have been unchanged for many, many years. The SEED Program, the Mineral Incentive Program, these are very useful subsidies to industry that remain stubbornly resistant to investment from, again, a government that's primarily driven by fiscal reduction targets and fiscal strategy rather than investment in growth, which is the source of the great budget debate we find ourselves in.

There are some troubling cuts. There are cuts to the Business Development and Investment Corporation in the amount of $477,000; reduction to community futures contributions of $42,000. These functions are crucial to front-line business support and supporting entrepreneurs and providing them the support they need to access capital, access opportunities for themselves and by extension create jobs in our communities. In particular, the Community Futures Contributions, dollar-for-dollar, those are high-impact investments and we've seen the success of those funds used very effectively in Indigenous communities. So why we are looking at rolling back some of those, I don't understand.

The SEED Program as well, it's a very useful program. It has a great deal of subscribers, and yet we're not looking at increasing it. The Standing Committee on Priorities and Planning has suggested an increase of $1.2 million in order to support the needs of a diversified economy.

One of the things we hear from entrepreneurs, from our constituents, and even from the department in business plan review is that there is not a lot of capital to go around and in times of economic recession or decline, government increasingly becomes the primary source of capital and access to those funds that can make diversification possible, and we need to do more. We need to do a better job of making those funds available so we can start to see that diversification which has been a long-stated goal of previous assemblies and is a goal of this Assembly.

You know, we're just skimming the surface, and what we are recommending as a committee is to do a bit more than that. To put a bit more capital out there for our entrepreneurs to access and, as my honourable friend mentioned, cut the red tape on business and increase the amount of loans that entrepreneurs can have access to.

I think we've seen incredible growth in tourism as well, and this plan has a lot of investment in that sector, and that's good, but we can't forget about manufacturing, we can't forget about agriculture, we can't forget about our creative fields such as the film industry. There have been a number of recommendations around film and increasing the Film Rebate Program and creating the capacity for Northerners to produce their own films; not just be a place where films are shot, but actually set up a bit of an industry. That may seem daunting, but again, if we work with our industry partners and provide them with the tools and resources they need, I think we could start to see some of these industries take off in very surprising and very fruitful directions.

Something that I often talk about, the Mineral Incentive Program is an incredible program for, again, giving some much-needed capital to junior miners. We hear Ministers of ITI talk about this often, that this is a great program, they're very proud of its success, and yet we do not invest in it. It has remained unchanged.

Our neighbours in the Yukon have a very similar program, except it has an advanced projects category and is currently in the range of $1 million of available funding, and ours is $400,000. So the committee is calling for an increase to top that up to a million dollars and to look at how best we can make those increased funds available to those engaged in exploration activities.

If we want mines, mines take 10 years, Mr. Chairman, and if we want to see new mines, then we need to encourage their exploration. We had a Cabinet attend the Roundup in Vancouver, which I think gives industry very strong signals that the North is interested in this field and wants to be open for business. Now we need to back up that investment with our policies and by making more resources available. Nothing sends a stronger signal than putting mineral incentives into our budget, and ultimately that's where I would like to see this department, in particular, focus its efforts on developing a strong plan for growth that's based on the grassroots and what we do best. We know there's proven success in mining. We know how to work in that industry. We have a lot of expertise in-house to develop that industry, so let's do that, but let's also focus on putting more resources into diversifying our economy. It's not going to happen by itself and, if it is a political goal of this Assembly, it's time to inject the capital we need to make that diversification happen.

So I'm looking forward to discussing this department in-depth and to making further recommendations around the committee's recommendations towards this department. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Testart. Next I have Mr. O'Reilly.