This season, Aurora viewing companies are expecting 11,000 visitors, a 10 percent increase over the number that visited last year.

Mr. Speaker, I will co-chair an oversight review committee with my colleague, the Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Jane Groenewegen, to oversee planning for the Northwest Territories participation at Expo 2005.

Currently, work is underway to prepare for our participation in this important event. We intend to highlight all aspects of the Northwest Territories, with specific focus on tourism, diamonds, culture and the arts. We are also very interested in working with...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I hope I got the nature of the question. The PAS is, in fact, grassroots driven. It’s really up to communities to identify areas that they think are culturally sensitive or natural or cultural areas that they feel are special and indeed need protection. So we rely on communities to identify those and then the various partners in the PAS all combine to make sure that those areas are, in fact, protected from future development. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the Member has indicated, the filing of the EIS is another important milestone for the pipeline project, and we’ve always said that it is important and this is why we support the Protected Areas Strategy currently, financially and in support to the secretariat. But it’s important to have protected areas established and we’re working toward doing that. This is a three-way partnership with some ENGOs and the federal government. We are trying to find the money in our government to fund our portion of the Protected Areas Strategy -- I think it’s $1.5 million over five...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First, I want to give the Member every assurance that we have wildlife officers and the department has wildlife officers in all the regions, and we believe they do a very good job of enforcing the regulations under the Wildlife Act. We acknowledge that it is a difficult job. It’s a vast territory and admittedly we don’t have as many wildlife officers as we would like to, but we are constrained by resources. We were both surprised and, I suppose, concerned that barren ground caribou arrived so soon so close to Yellowknife and on the Ingraham Trail; concerned about...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the Member indicates, the A and R plan under the terms of the federal water licence is under review by the Mackenzie Valley Land and Water Board. They have formed a working group to review the draft plan put forward by the mine, by Miramar.

We are sitting on that working group and we also indicated our support for some public process. They have had public meetings and hearings on the draft A and R plan. It is my understanding that Miramar has now taken some of that input and the recommendations from the working group. They have taken that away and are revising...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the Member indicated, I was able to meet with the Minister of DIAND in Ottawa on September 1st and had a fair bit of discussion around the cleanup at Giant Mine. We discussed the issues in-depth and I was very impressed, he was well briefed on the file. He indicated that it was a priority for the department to see this cleanup move forward. The last time I stood in the House and answered the Member’s questions in this regard, he had some concern about the level of dialogue, I believe, between our officials and DIAND officials. I am getting weekly updates from my...

Mr. Speaker, Heritage Canada has invited the provinces and territories to participate at Expo 2005, to be held from March to September 2005 in Aichi, Japan. Aichi Prefecture is about an hour train ride west of Tokyo, near the city of Nagoya. The theme of Expo 2005 is Nature’s Wisdom.

Organizers anticipate that more than 15 million people will visit Expo 2005 over a six-month period and 1.5 million visitors are anticipated to visit the Canadian pavilion with some 90 percent of these visitors expected to be Japanese.

This exposition provides an excellent opportunity to market the Northwest...

Mr. Speaker, we will continue to make the case to the federal government that this is a priority for northerners, and we would acknowledge that although there’s been a lot of good work done by the partners over the past five years and we’re in the fifth year of implementation, we have yet to protect a single area. There are interim areas, there are areas that have been identified for protection, but we haven’t, in fact, done this and we see this as, to date, a failing of the work of both our government and the federal government and the ENGOs. So obviously we have to move forward clearly. We...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We continue to make the case to our federal counterparts that this is a priority and we believe support for development initiatives up and down the valley will hinge on federal support for PAS. I think that’s true. You’ve seen quite a bit of lobbying from ENGOs who believe the federal government has to do more in this regard. So between ourselves and the ENGOs, we continue to press the case to the federal Ministers responsible that this is indeed a priority and this is something that needs to be addressed right now. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you. I think the Minister has already indicated some of the criteria around the program, matching dollars from the organization and the money can’t be used for administrative purposes, there is a requirement for record keeping. The contribution agreement I imagine is typical of the contribution agreements that we’ve done with this program. There’s a separate bank account set up to administer the account. There’s a requirement of an equal contribution to come from the organization. There are payment terms set out. There’s a list of eligible expenses. Then there’s provision for audits...