Bob McLeod

Through the BDIC board we do work with different companies and through the business programs of this government. We make every effort to work with them to get them through this difficult period.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The tourism industry is facing a number of challenges these days for a number of reasons: partly the volatility of the financial market, the currency exchange rate, and there seems to be a trend to move away from the consumptive sports — hunting and fishing — toward more adventure, ecotourism opportunities. As a department we recognized this several years ago, and we put forward a number of different diversification and marketing programs to help existing operators develop new tourism products.

Mr. Speaker, the Member referred to the human resource strategic plan that we’re developing, which will be a ten year strategic plan, with our ultimate goal to reaffirm that the GNWT public service is the best place to work in the Northwest Territories. It’s unclear to me what kind of retribution these summer students would be fearful of. We do provide them with an opportunity to respond through exit interviews. As we go through our consultation, if the general feeling is that we should provide a blog, an opportunity for them to respond, we are quite prepared to do so.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As a government we are very pleased that we were able to offer summer student employment to 281 summer students. I’m quite surprised to hear it appears the majority were disillusioned, because of the fact that we’ve taken extra steps to ensure that summer students were gainfully employed. We provided orientation opportunities for them, and we worked very closely with all of the departments to make sure that their employment was meaningful and allowed them to gain some skills that they could carry forward.

As well, we do provide the opportunity for exit interviews for...

I don’t have a specific number, but I do know that we’ve been working with some of the operators to continue operations for several years. I expect some of the individual operators would have some significant loans, but I don’t have that information right now.

The Tourism Product Diversification and Marketing Program was introduced last year. In total, $687,000 was approved for ten businesses and organizations this past year. We have regular banking days, and the total program over the three year period is about $2.5 million.

It’s still owned and is a subsidiary of those companies that the Member talked about.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Maybe I could paraphrase that and say that the Public Utilities Board reviews the cost applications by the electrical providers to ensure that the costs are appropriate and relevant. They do that through a number of processes, including public hearings, interventions and making the public aware of these applications for increases.

Mr. Speaker, I too was at the meeting where we heard a number of mayors suggest that we sell some assets. These are the kinds of questions we are asking as we are undertaking our review. I think we have to be very careful. Some of these suggestions could have serious repercussions. If we’re going to privatize our electrical generating companies — and I also hear other Members saying we should have deregulation…. If you look at other provinces where they have had deregulation, where everything is in the private sector…. I am not saying it is a bad thing; our department has the lead for...

Mr. Speaker, as a government we have released a number of discussion papers. We have an energy priorities paper that we have released, which identified all of our priorities. We are now entering the second phase, whereby we will be coming forward with business plans in which we will identify the resources necessary to undertake the initiatives we have identified. If the Assembly approves, then we will have the resources to be able to continue with these very important projects.