Brendan Bell

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the Member indicated, the legislation in the life of the last government was in fact the Waste Reduction and Recovery Act. The first program falling underneath that legislative piece of work was the Beverage Container Recovery Program and that’s what we’ve been working on. The Member will remember that we struck an advisory committee a few months back. I think there were nine members from environmental organizations, from communities, from industry, who sat down to discuss the program and come up with some advice to us on regulations and a methodology for development...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, I will. Support to the traditional economy and for the traditional economy is very important for this department. We’ll have continued discussions with committee about how we can continue to raise the profile of trapping. I think it’s very important, and I agree with the Member that if a generation loses their trapping skills, it would be very difficult to get them back. We have to do what we can to make sure the people who want to live this lifestyle can do so. Mr. Speaker, obviously it’s not an easy living. I think we recognize that. This is very...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This agreement is very important for us and it was signed a number of years ago by the Prime Minister. The European Union was concerned, or said they had concerns with our humane trapping standards. We agreed that we would fund research as a country to ensure that we were doing the most we possibly could to find the most humane methods of trapping, and this Vegreville facility was where that work and research was done. Without the continued funding of this facility and in effect without us complying with the agreement, we were in real danger of having the EU step in...

Thank you. I can certainly work with committee to do that. One of the unknowns here is how successful we’ll be at recycling. There is a cost to setting up this program and I suppose if we do a very poor job of recycling, then that program cost will be paid off much more quickly. If we really take up this recycling ethic in earnest, then it will be over a longer period of time. I hope that we do take that up, and certainly we’ll work with committee so we can analyze this and discuss, in fact, how well it’s progressing. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can’t get into the business plan discussion for this year and the specifics of that, but I can say that I’m expecting the results of this review, this tourism programs and services review, before Christmas. That will allow me to get this into the machinery for the business planning cycle for next year. It will be in with a number of competing needs, but I’ll strongly advocate for and make the case that we need to focus on this in the upcoming business planning session. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the Premier said, tourism is very important to the government and coming from our strategic plan, our 10-year plan, linked to that are a number of initiatives. We’ve had a good discussion around this area, both with committee and also with Caucus, and developed a number of theme areas. One of them is the diversification of the economy, and we see tourism as something that has great potential for all regions of the Northwest Territories and we can provide business opportunities for northerners from coast to coast to coast and I think that there are a number of key...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think that we want to be able to focus more keenly on tourism, and that, I hope, will involve more money going forward, but I need to be able to go back to the Financial Management Board with a compelling case given the strain on resources and the competing needs for resources. That case, I think, will be built around this product inventory. I need to be able to explain to my colleagues that we do need to focus as much resource as possible on helping people in communities develop product. This is one of the reasons we talked around the BDIC and the flexibility...

Thank you. I will certainly commit to continue with the programs we are currently providing in this regard. I think they are very important and very worthwhile. The member has indicated a couple and we’ve received a lot of response from other jurisdictions who really envy the fur pricing program and suggest that this is unprecedented support for that industry. I would also like to add that this government recognizes the need to diversify our economy and ensure that we aren’t solely reliant on mining, oil and gas development. There are a lot of tourism opportunities and a lot of renewable...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This office will coordinate the activities of this government. The Member is suggesting that that is lacking. I would concur. I would agree that that is lacking and we don’t have the capacity currently to coordinate and manage all the activities related to oil and gas and pipeline development. We are hoping that this office can do that. It’s going to need direction from the joint committee and need direction from Cabinet and ordinary Members. We can’t simply set up this office and hope that it will find its way through the myriad of challenges that will be this...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, we do have positions across the government that are involved in oil and gas. We know that ECE and the college are engaged in training activities, safety, welding and driver training. I think some 400-plus people went through training programs with ECE and the college last year to be ready for oil and gas. MACA does have employees engaged in capacity building, helping communities build capacity to be ready for oil and gas development. Other types of development are obviously RWED, with its petroleum advisors and business programs has a number of people involved in...