First of all, for the record, I want to put it on the record that the Northwest Territories is one of few jurisdictions in Canada that asks for operators to have a licence. I want that on the record.

Since this story has come to light, of course, I have been briefed up, because it has been in the news for two days and may be even coming out for a third day. This is something that the news outlet has latched onto. As I have said, I don't think this is a rampant thing happening in the Northwest Territories. Sure, there are problems that come along with success, and success in the tourism industry is huge within the Northwest Territories, and particularly Yellowknife, but I don't believe this is a rampant situation.

Our department has done a ton of work around what we are trying to do to alleviate concerns about this. Some of the complaints that have come forward have not been very substantive, and the accusations that people are providing are hearsay, and they don't want to go much farther than that. We do follow up on complaints. I can tell that, the majority of the time, they turn to be compliant, licensed operators.

What we have done as a department, we have moved to how we are going to set up to improve enforcement, particularly in the North Slave region, because that is where most of this issue is happening right now. We have staffed our regional office to facilitate, manage, and police expanded use of our parks of aurora tourism. We have now a dedicated manager of tourism in the North Slave. We are completing weekly tours and inspections of the aurora touring operators.

For enforcement purposes, we have given enforcement authorities to our tourist development officers, as well as our full-time and part-time parks officers. We have changed the deadlines. This is one of the big ones that we have done lately. We have changed the deadlines of our tourism operator licence renewals so that the tourism development officers can better balance the renewals with enforcement duties.

All tourism operators in the NWT are required to carry a card confirming they are registered and compliant under the Tourism Act, and as a pilot project this winter, I can inform this House that we are introducing a new vehicle identification sticker for aurora operators in the North Slave so that they can be easily confirmed as compliant tourism licence holders.