Thank you. Member for Great Slave.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And I'm really excited to hear that. You know, I think it would be an amazing opportunity to offer, like, you know, go berry picking with an elder when we have people coming into the North. And as well too just all the mental health advantages of, you know, growing our own food and working with the earth and etcetera so I'm really happy to hear that.

I guess I just want to come back to something we talked about before the pandemic took over our lives, and that was the lack of anything around in the downtown core. In the winter months, when we do have the Aurora tours, you often would see them sort of wandering around downtown kind of looking for things to do. I do recognize that the Yellowknife visitors centre is now up and running and have yet myself to get in there and plan to soon. However, can the Minister or the department speak a bit more about, you know, is there a plan to start hiring or having sort of almost showcasing artists or cultural exhibitions and such on a more frequent basis, just on a very small scale around the downtown, in order to provide something for our tourists to do on the offset hours? And even around there could then be some arts markets and such. Thank you.

Thank you. Minister.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, that probably is -- the answer there is probably going to have to look as much to the arts funding that is being proposed in the main estimates here as much as it is to tourism programming. But, again, as I had indicated earlier when I made a commitment that I will go back to NWT Tourism around accommodation issues and what work they may be doing, perhaps I'll add to that list, and I no doubt am due for a touch base with them, that we can speak specifically about what we can do to increase access to the arts sector as well. And again, you know, they are funded to support tourism broadly across the Northwest Territories. There's art funding to support artists across the territories. Maybe there are ways to take advantage and combine those things together so I'll add that to a list, and I'll add the agri-tourism to that same list. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Member for Great Slave.

Thank you. And I appreciate having the 40 seconds left so I can ask one more question. So then I guess my last question is around the community tourism infrastructure. I look at that, and we have seen a few changes, and I know that we had an influx during the pandemic, when I was sitting in that seat, just to keep some money going into communities while building things like kitchen shelters, that sort of thing. I'm glad we're up a hundred thousand from last year but a hundred thousand dollars does not go very far when it comes to trying to build anything in the communities. Can the Minister speak to are there other access or funding pots that communities can access for this infrastructure or put together, and do we anticipate seeing a larger demand than we have the money for, and is more money coming? Thank you.

Thank you. Minister, if you can answer that shortly. If it's longer, maybe you could provide it in writing to the committee or to the Member. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I would certainly be happy to provide a list to committee of all the tourism funding available. There are quite a number of pots. I do have a detailed note here that lists them all with the amounts, and that probably is the most effective way of putting that forward. And I would just otherwise give one quick note which is to say CanNor does often come in, and we are able to work with them when there's particular funding shortages for communities or to connect communities directly to CanNor so they can go to them. So wouldn't want to not give them that thank you where it's available. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. So we'll get that to -- okay, thank you. All right. Member for Yellowknife North.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I saw that there's an engagement and a land use permit going in to expand the parking when you get to the end of Tibbitt Lake at the end of the Ingraham Trail. Happy to see that. Happy to see that the signage has been added. I'm just hoping the Minister can clarify whether that's ITI or infrastructure money or operations or capital money, where exactly that money is coming from? Thank you.

Thank you, Member. Minister.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, the signage is a shared initiative with ENR, ITI, and Infrastructure. I believe that we are responsible for the parking?

Deputy minister Strand.

Thank you. Member for Yellowknife North.

Well, I'll save questions on that for Infrastructure. I guess I'm going to try one more attempt, my last in this Assembly, about winter camping. I know there's many different ways this could look. I want to perhaps point out one of the lowest cheapest ways is I saw the town of Fort Smith recently partnered with the Salt River First Nation and is running a number of on the land camping expeditions which are available to everyone who wants to go on them. And there's a number of elders participating, and it's kind of a training exercise. And I think this kind of, you know, bridges the gap in -- you know, it's kind of something ENR would typically run, perhaps even ECE. But I'm just wondering, you know, ITI has a lot of parks staff who obviously some of their work winds down during the winter, whether that's something ITI would explore, offering that type of kind of camping programming in the winter and perhaps using some of our territorial parks or perhaps just doing it on general public land. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Minister of ITI.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, if there is an operator in the North Slave area that is interested in running winter camping, we would love to hear from them. There is going to be a whole list of funding opportunities that I'll be sharing with MLAs after today to give opportunity for potential operators to access funds to open their winter camping opportunity. The costs to the department, when we ran just two extra weeks back in 2020, was well over $200,000 and largely because of the costs of the contractors. Now that is across all of the regions that were participating in that pilot back a couple of years ago but there was very low uptake, very high costs, and it literally was to pay for the contractors. So if there is a private sector party that wants to get involved in this area, please, as I said there's going to be a lot of opportunity for funding that they can apply for and hopefully participate in. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Minister. Member for Yellowknife North.

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair, I guess just a bit of a comment. There is a couple private sector operators who are now at multiple years waiting for a response on their commercial lease applications to open some cabins and potentially rent them out. There is also multiple people who have expressed to me that if they were allowed to rent out for any commercial purposes their cabins that they would gladly do that. So perhaps just the Minister could have a conversation with her colleague at the Department of Lands and see what barriers, you know, exist in regulation and/or in accessing leases to offer some sort of winter camping, because I know there -- it's hard. You can't just -- there's no building presently that exists where you legally can do that. You have to go get a commercial lease application, which seems to not be happening. So I guess in the form of a question, is the department willing to kind of talk with Lands and get an update on where they are at in some of their outstanding issues in this area? Thank you.

Thank you. Minister of ITI.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I think it's been said before there have been regular meetings with the LNR departments, Lands, ENR, or now ECC and ITI, and I can certainly suggest that we put this on our shared agenda.

Thank you. Are there any further questions under tourism and parks? Member for Thebacha.

Thank you, Madam Chair. My first question is the extension of hours within the parks. At Queen Elizabeth Park, they close on September 1st, and not this past year but the year before we didn't have snow until November 3rd and we had warm weather until almost the end of October. So I'm not asking that it open until the end of October but at least until the end of September. It's really important that we encourage more tourism; we encourage people to use our parks as much as possible. And I'm just wondering how the Minister feels on this. Thank you, Madam Chair.