Brendan Bell

I do, Madam Chair. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I want to take this opportunity today to announce to my constituents that I won’t be seeking re-election in the upcoming territorial election. I want to thank them for their support over the last eight years. It’s been an absolutely wonderful experience for me; the most rewarding eight years of my life. Of course, a number of things, and Members know, Mr. Speaker, have happened to me in my personal life over the last eight years, very important things: I have been married, I have two wonderful children now and so it’s an amazing time of change for me....

Mr. Speaker, I don’t have that information here available. I will get the information for the Member. As I have indicated, we haven’t considered, at this point, caribou hides. A lot of it is going to depend on uptake. We are not sure ultimately what the demand will look like, but we do have funds in the budget that we are going to use for moose at this point. We will watch the program. We will evaluate the program. If there is cause and room to expand it, we will certainly look at that. But we will get back to Members with the results of this before we propose to do that. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I think I got the question. It was about the funding for the renovations. I believe those renovations have been completed. I can’t remember if in the business plan it also contemplates further monies for renovations. My tour, the last time I was in Ulukhaktok, of the facility, from a lay view it seemed to be a very good building. I know that there were some issues that we were seeking to address, but it’s not like it needed a massive overhaul. So I can’t tell you if there are further renovations contemplated, but I know that we did do some building envelope stuff to ensure...

Mr. Chair, I think the important thing to note here is that NTCL, Aurora Village, Aurora World, Watta Lake Lodge, Mackay Lake Lodge, and Arctic Chalet, these are businesses that have a lot of history here. They will be here in the next government. The Premier’s role is to open doors for these businesses and no slight to Mr. Handley, but what is more important is that it is the office of the Premier. That is the compelling issue here, not the person who is in that role. We have the ability to use our Premier and his office to open some very important doors. It can open up new markets to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have two documents for tabling. They are proposed amendments to the Maintenance Orders Enforcement Act, August 2007 and proposed amendments to the Residential Tenancies Act, August 2007. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Chairman, thank you. No, I don’t think it’s too much to ask if committee could see the detail of this proposed trip. I’m certainly prepared to provide that. I indicated earlier that this was really focused on businesspeople and primarily they are the folks that are travelling. For instance, NTCL is very interested in some Chinese manufacturing opportunities, transporting modules down from Tuk and through the Mackenzie to the oil sands. Aurora Village and Aurora World will be present; obviously interested in diversifying their aurora tourism business from just Japanese. A couple of...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. For the last several years, my department has been lobbying Chinese trade officials to try to build a program to go to China and open some doors for some of our businesspeople specifically in tourism and also some opportunities we see in transportation. But tourism, as we have seen with the aurora industry coming under additional pressure, Japanese numbers are falling off. We have been looking at a logical market to diversify to. All evidence points to China and its 1.3 billion people as being very prospective for us in terms of aurora tourism, but we are having...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would also like to recognize Bob McLeod today who I think has lived in Yellowknife South since 1988. That makes him one of the original Yellowknife South constituents. The riding isn’t that old. Welcome to the gallery, Bob.

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Mr. Chairman, I could speak to a lot of this detail, but it’s probably easier if Members had this in front of them. So what I’ll do is make sure that you have copies of this information, you have the briefing note that I have in front of me, you can see who the meetings are with, who is on the list and we’ll make sure that happens in the next half an hour here. Thank you.

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