Bob McLeod

The Negotiated Contracts Policy will be reviewed again in the fall of 2016, and the results will be shared with the standing committee. We will involve the standing committees. As per land claims agreements, one of the requirements is under economic measures; we have responsibility to also engage the community governments, so we do that in a normal course of events, Mr. Speaker.

Local employment is always a factor when considering negotiated contracts but not at any costs, Mr. Speaker. We also have rules that govern our business incentive policies and our northern preference policies. The Member referred to the Inuvik Tuk Highway. In that case, there was the benefits and jobs are available, 600 jobs a year, 80 per cent provided by Northerners for Northerners.

The Growing Forward 2 Agreement provides up to $1.2 million annually in cost-shared investment to the Northwest Territories agricultural sector to increase resource capacity to grow food in all NWT communities. The Small Scale Foods Program is delivered in all 33 Northwest Territories communities through ITI's regional offices primarily in support of community gardens. We have seen much success with the insulation of community greenhouses in communities on the Beaufort Sea. Many of the initiatives are community led and the department is pleased to provide insight, support and expertise.

As the...

In regards to your specific question, our department has been working with the Zhahti Koe Friendship Centre since late 2015 on developing a community garden. They secured a land lot recently and fencing has been ordered. Twenty raised garden boxes, a tool shed and compost bins are ready and will be shipped to the community. The department has not received any applications specific to commercial gardening or greenhouses at this point. We also run the Take a Kid Gardening Program in the schools. We have a regional office that's very ready and willing and prepared to work with anybody that's...

But I agree it's important to make sure our programs are effective. We have seen increased interest in our agriculture program as more and more people are growing their own food. We're still in early days as the strategy has not been released; however, we will review the effectiveness of this strategy as we move forward into implementation.

The draft Agriculture Strategy has many recommendations on how to develop and support educational programs and educational resource development for agriculture. We will encourage and support the development and delivery of courses for community and regional trainers. The goal with the strategy is to improve overall capacity by having more people involved in northern agriculture, and we will develop foundational safe agriculture and food production, education resources including community and private sharing agriculture and harvesting of non-animal products. And the draft Agriculture Strategy...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Agriculture is a very important sector to our government and part of the Mandate of the 18th Legislative Assembly. We have provided the Standing Committee on Economic Development and Environment with a draft Agriculture Strategy for review and look forward to hearing back from the committee. A key recommendation of the proposed strategy is that various organizations need to work together, including departmental collaboration to ensure that we all use our resources efficiently and effectively.

Another recommendation is the creation of a central repository or a common...

We are always looking for opportunities to maximize the funding reach of our scarce resources and certainly we've been approached by other bodies including I guess different non-government organizations I guess is the best way to call them that and we also have very good connections with universities, so we certainly want to get the best bang for our buck and we look at all of the different sources of funding.

I'd like to reassure the Member that we're not waiting until the Northwest Territories Agriculture Strategy becomes the strategy. Right now as we go forward we certainly encourage Northwest Territories residents to become involved in agriculture. Our ITI regional offices are the contacts for anyone interested in learning more about agriculture, including the development of greenhouses, and the department will be pleased to work with all communities to make progress on this front.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When the Member in his Member's Statement referred to food from Mars I thought he had talked to my grandson who-- I was talking to him yesterday or the other day and he said he had a project that he was working on and I asked him what it was. He said he and his friend were planning a trip to Mars and he lamented that he had the hard part of the job because he had to find a way to get to Mars; his friend had the easy job, he just had to figure out how to grow food on Mars, so.

---Laughter