Bob McLeod

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.

Mr. Speaker, management of the public service is a shared responsibility with all departments. We do have a deputy ministers’ human resource committee, and we’ll make sure that all of the departments are aware of this.

Mr. Speaker, it doesn’t sound like it’s a summer student issue; it sounds like it’s a government operations issue. Certainly one of the initiatives of our government is to work on making our operations a lot more effective and efficient, including the reduction and elimination of wasteful practices.

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.

At the time of the legislation that was passed and the current thinking as well…. What has been constructed is a new spillway, which would not impact on the rates of the current users. For that reason, it was set up the way it was. There’s a new ownership structure that has been set up for the new spillway that’s being constructed at some point in the near future.

At the time that the legislation was passed, the comments of the Public Utilities Board were not sought.

We are undertaking our review shortly. We’ll be coming out with a discussion paper. I think it would be of great assistance for the community leaders and people to tell us what their concerns are and how they would like to see us operate. We’ll be coming forward with those short term/long term solutions through the business planning process. In the longer term, with the results of the review and feedback and direction from the Members here, we would look at making whatever changes would be required, including restructuring, new rates, what have you.

Mr. Speaker, certainly we want to work with the small communities. Recognizing the high cost of energy in communities and as we roll out our business plans, we expect to have working with the communities be a large part of it.