Bob McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The plan for this summer’s fishing industry is unchanged. We’ve just started the process of consultation in the Northwest Territories to make sure that we have input from all of the stakeholders before we make the next move, which is to formally request that we be allowed to exit the Freshwater Fish Marking Corporation.

It was pointed out to us a number of examples where the approach that we’re taking is resulting in missed opportunities. Certainly we’ve taken their input very seriously. We would look at expanding a film commission so that it really works and also to having people that are very familiar and have worked in the industry. Hopefully we’ll have a chance to collect an Oscar one of these years.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I was quite pleased to be able to work with some of the Members from the other side to help organize a meeting with some of the northern filmmakers. I thought we had a very productive meeting and we shared concerns from all sides. I think we found a way to go forward.

We’re currently drafting terms of reference that we will share with everybody that attended and anybody else that’s interested. My expectation is that we’ll be able to get them out within a month.

Thank you. We have sent an e-mail to every department, we’ve sent it to every Cabinet Minister and we’ve sent it to every MLA. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you. P1 and P2 summer students are a priority. We then go to aboriginal casuals and then we go to P3s. There’s really no issue here because every summer there is less than a 5 percent likelihood of an aboriginal casual employee being hired between the summer because we do give direction that all departments should be hiring summer students. Thank you.

By all means, we’d certainly be interested in talking to the Alberta government about exporting of fish from the Northwest Territories to Alberta. We would be quite prepared to move on this fairly quickly to have those discussions. Thank you.

I don’t expect that we’ll be able to do it by as early as this fall. We still have to work out the exit arrangements from the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation. We still have to go through due diligence with this Legislative Assembly and we still have to work with the fishermen to set up alternative processes. It’s not our expectation to replace FFMC with a son of FFMC. We would take a brand new approach which would focus on developing northern markets.

I’ll work very closely with my colleague, the Minister of ECE, and make sure that we do provide for this coverage in the appropriate places.

Mr. Speaker, I give notice that, on Wednesday, May 19, 2010, I will move that Bill 9, An Act to Amend the Tourism Act, be read for the first time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We are working very diligently to make sure that all of the timelines are met and that when the report comes out in September 2010 we’ll be able to deal with the recommendations.