The Nutrition North appears to have one program which is a retailer food subsidy, where they provide subsidies to retailers that provide nutritious foods to the communities. Having said that, cost of living, food security, are all issues that are high-priority for our government, and we are always looking for ways to improve in those areas to reduce the cost of living, and also to make more nutritious foods available to the communities even if they are not included on the Nutrition North list of communities. Right now, there are now 15 Northwest Territories communities that are now included. We are prepared to work together to find a way to get the federal government to engage and invest, we would be pleased to do that as well.

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Nahendeh.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I thank the Premier for hearing that. My big thing is, my concern, I have two communities who do not have stores. They do not have access to food, so that is probably a big challenge for them. In regards to the residents that have commercial gardens, will the Premier work with the Minister of ITI to come up with a plan so that food can be subsidized so that they can sell their product to the residents of the NWT on a level playing field? In other words, look at the opportunity for Nutrition North to subsidize some of our local farmers. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The federal government as I have said, only provides a retailers' food subsidy. Right now, they are not providing subsidies for other sources of food production. We did, as part of signing on to the Canadian Free Trade Agreement, we will be meeting, and are meeting with Agriculture Canada to find ways to develop agriculture in the Northwest Territories. Those that are interested in dairy, chicken, turkey, we will have to find other sources because of the fact that that is a closed door other than existing farmers, but we will be negotiating with Agriculture Canada to look at other forms of agriculture. Ours, as a government, we have developed a number of strategies to help improve in the area of food security. We have an agricultural strategy. We have a fishery strategy. We have a small scale garden program where we now have, all communities of the North have small scale community gardens.

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Hay River North.

Masi. Minister of Infrastructure.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Since I obtained the portfolio, I have met with the Minister of DFO twice; once in November of 2016 and once in March of 2017 of this year. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I gave the Minister an opportunity to do that because I know he has been meeting with the Minister, and I know he has been pushing this in Ottawa, and I know he is working hard for Hay River to get this fishing strategy going. When it comes to talks with Freshwater, as you know in my statement, I outlined some of the problems with Freshwater. Where are we at the talks with Freshwater to get this fish plant either rebuilt, refurbished, or build one of our own?

As all Members are aware, in the Member's statement today that Freshwater Marketing Corp., its future is very uncertain, as the last person standing technically is the Northwest Territories. We are waiting for a ruling out of Manitoba, as it sounds like they are pulling out of the Freshwater Marketing Corporation, so that is 80 per cent of their market gone. How do we move this forward? We have been working with Freshwater to this point, and it has been very challenging, and with the situation that has arisen around the Manitoba thing, it has put a lot of things into question. The last time that I met with the Minister of DFO, we had an opportunity to talk about this stuff. We are talking about a range of opportunities that have been presented to us now with the possibility of Manitoba pulling out, and we are in discussions directly with the DFO office on this matter.

As we can tell from the Minister's answer, it is tough to deal with Freshwater. I mean, it is an organization in disarray. We need this fish plant. At what point is this government prepared to pull away from Freshwater and just build our own fish plant?

I am not sure if this is the time to be walking away from the table, just yet, because this is going to take a lot of resources to get this figured out and how to build something and get the processes and money in place to be able to build something like this. The challenge, like I say, is particularly around the resources, and I think we need to be engaged, which we are now, directly with the Minister's office on how we are going to move forward. Hopefully, we are going to be able to come to some solution between us and the federal government in the near future.

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Hay River North.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Processing fish is one part of the equation. The other part is marketing this fish ourselves or having the fishermen market it themselves, and part of the revitalization strategy is to build those markets, whether they be in the territory, they be in Alberta, or overseas. What are we doing, what is the government doing, to create those markets now? The plan calls for getting out of Freshwater. That is what the plan calls for. We need those markets, so where are we? Do we have someone hired? Do we have markets developed in the South? Can I get an update on that? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As everyone knows, the quota system being signed onto Freshwater Fish, 100 per cent of our fish goes to the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation. We believed, as we went into revitalizing the fishing strategy, that there are market opportunities for us outside of Freshwater. Being that we are still signatory to the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation, we are still obliged to sell our fish to the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation. We are looking at expanding our opportunities outside of that, but, before we can do that, as I said, we have got to figure out our relationship with the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation, and now we are dealing directly with the Minister of DFO on this situation. Hopefully, we can figure this out sooner rather than later and get on with the revitalization of the Great Slave fishery.

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife North.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I raised some points earlier about enabling the City of Yellowknife to possibly start a hotel levy. That would fall under the department of Municipal and Community Affairs, so my questions are for the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs today. I just want to start, first of all, asking the Minister: there have been some recent changes as it relates to it. The Minister, herself, is relatively new to this portfolio. There is a new deputy minister, and there is a new senior administrator officer at the city, so I would just simply like to ask the Minister how the relationship between MACA and the City of Yellowknife is going so far, and are they working effectively together? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Masi. Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, I am more than proud to report that the relationship between the City of Yellowknife and Municipal and Community Affairs is positive. Yes, it is true that we have a new deputy minister, but her experience has been many, many years working with community governments. She is not new to Municipal and Community Affairs nor new to city governments, so she has a solid relationship with the City of Yellowknife. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

That is good news and welcome news. I can attest to what the Minister described, as a former Yellowknife City Councillor. The new deputy minister was an assistant deputy minister at the time, and we have always had a positive relationship with her at the City of Yellowknife. I spoke earlier about the city's intention. They want to introduce a hotel levy, and I am wondering if the Minister can describe the most recent analysis of that question of a hotel levy and what the department has learned.

The department of Municipal and Community Affairs has done a cross-jurisdictional analysis of hotel levies to see within other jurisdictions how they are presented, how they are run, what the costs look like, et cetera, so we have done that research. We are also working with the City of Yellowknife very closely. We have had over six meetings with them since October, developing a discussion paper that we will be bringing forward to other stakeholders.

Thank you to the Minister for her reply and updating us on what we will term the discussion paper. I guess, if the discussion paper is sort of a next step towards this possible opportunity of a hotel levy, can the Minister describe to us maybe then what the next steps are and what the schedule might be towards actually developing potential legislation and when the municipalities might be in a better position to actually start a hotel levy?

Yes, we are meeting with the six municipalities during the summer, when session is over, to discuss the proposed changes that we are looking at. We have also realized that it is not only the municipalities that will be affected by this; it is also hotel operators and lodging operators that might be affected by it, as well. So, in trying to be as transparent and inclusive as possible, Municipal and Community Affairs is also reaching out to those operators to get their feedback on the proposed amendments.

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife North.