Bob McLeod

We’re talking about the Arctic Winter Games. We’re not talking about the Olympic Games or the Canada Winter Games, as have been previously referred to. The government of the Northwest Territories is following a policy that has been in place for 40-some years. We think we’ve been more than generous with our leave policy for participants in the Arctic Winter Games.

I would suggest that the business traveller who comes up and stays on as a tourist would probably spend more money.

Mr. Speaker, I’m very pleased to see the honourable Member come to realize the value of tourism and that he will support making more resources available to promote the Northwest Territories.

I think that as a territory we have been very successful in the last few years in increasing the level of resources available for tourism. We have been working in partnership with the N.W.T. Tourism Association. We have the Tourism 2010 Strategy. We have more than doubled the amount of money we are investing in tourism.

Working with the other two territories of Yukon and Nunavut, we established a marketing...

If the Member wants us to go back to take the same position as we did in 1996, that would mean we’d have to look at the funding. We provided considerably less funding in 1996.

I just want to advise the Member that we have 33 communities in the Northwest Territories. I think we have to take a fair approach. Other communities in the Northwest Territories won’t benefit from reviewing this. We’ve followed leave policy, and we’ve expanded it to include head coaches and first responders. I think the government has been very fair in this regard.

Mr. Speaker, I guess there’s a number of reasons for that. I certainly concur with the Member that we need to do a better job to improve our employment of persons with disabilities. I guess the large part of the problem — and she’s already alluded to it — is self-identification. I do know that we have employees who are not self-identified, but that doesn’t make the situation any better, as the Member says.

I think that what we need to do is to work very closely with the groups that work with persons with disabilities and work with individuals to improve the situation. I think the Affirmative...

We certainly can commit to do that. Also, I’d like to point out that we’re working very closely with the diamond companies. We think this is a problem for all of us to work together on to try to resolve this situation.

We met with diamond companies in early December. We will continue to work with them. We can also work with the communities to make them more attractive for workers who live in the south to relocate to the Northwest Territories.

As the Member knows, we have a socio-economic agreement that we negotiated with De Beers. As part of the agreement, there’s an implementation provision that allows, for a certain period of time, for De Beers to provide these employees. Over the longer term, it is our expectation that De Beers and the diamond company as well will hire Northern workers to work in the mines in accordance with the socio-economic agreements that have been negotiated.

I should also point out that in each of the cases, the other diamond companies are also providing — I guess the Member called them migrant workers —...

Mr. Speaker, the new Tourism Product Diversification and Marketing Program was officially launched by the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment on January 7, 2008.

This program will provide N.W.T. operators with the knowledge and means to reinvent or expand their tourism products and operations, to capitalize on changing markets, and to better meet the trends and demands that we anticipate will provide growth for our tourism industry in the future.

As part of the investment outlined in the Tourism 2010 strategy, Industry, Tourism and Investment and Northwest Territories Tourism have...

I think the pent-up demand is still there. It just became a question of cash-flowing the money. We rolled out the program on January 7, and as the applications have been rolling in, we realized that, as part of the cash-flowing, we weren’t going to have enough applications to flow the whole $2.5 million in this fiscal year. To ensure that all the money goes for tourism operators, we put forward a request to re-profile it. And that’s why we’re bringing it forward here as part of the supplementary appropriation.

The overall effect is that we’re still going to have $5.6 million over four years...

Mr. Speaker, I guess I would like to point out to the Members that we have been a bit proactive in this area. We have identified a special liaison person to deal with persons with disabilities.

I would have to look at the Affirmative Action Policy. I don’t know whether that’s the best way to improve the representation of persons with disabilities in the government workforce. We’re still working on our strategic plan.

In the past, governments have been presented with a draft employment equity strategy, which I think is more suited to dealing with these types of situations. As we go forward, I...