David Ramsay

No, we don’t have any large scale projects planned.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We have a duty and an obligation to ensure that our staff and the duties that they carry out on behalf of the residents of the Northwest Territories each and every day are done and conducted in a safe manner. These vehicles are required to ensure that the sheriff’s office can conduct its business in a safe manner. I don’t think we should be underscoring the important work the sheriff’s office does on behalf of all residents here in the NWT. Thank you.

I agree with the Member that this is a very important sector of our economy. I do take issue with some of the Member’s overtures that we are just paying lip service and that we are taking our time. Mr. Speaker, this is important to us. As I mentioned, we are going to come forward with the What We Heard report. We initially formed the basis of a draft Agriculture Strategy for the Northwest Territories.

This is too important to be rushed through. We are taking our time. We are listening to people and stakeholders around the Northwest Territories to ensure that we get this right because it is such...

Yes, the department and the regions do a lot of work on looking at our infrastructure when the park season ends, cataloguing areas of concern, places where we need to look at making some investment and upgrading and looking at maintenance issues. This is done, and I know when you’re dealing with the travelling public and our residents using our parks, it’s very important that that work happen every year. We also have park officers and park staff who frequent the parks during the park season that are consistently bringing issues to our concern, and they can be addressed in a timely fashion.

A safe assumption would be, and it would vary from month to month, depending on what month of the year you’re talking about, but an average of at least twice a month the court party travels from Yellowknife to the community of Behchoko. They’re there for three to five days, at least twice a month, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’ve had some great forward momentum when it comes to agriculture here In the Northwest Territories. We’ve advanced the sector tremendously. We have a What We Heard document from consultations we’ve had with the public and stakeholders around the territory. We will be tabling that report in the House during this sitting. Thank you.

Perhaps I’ll have Ms. Kaylo explain the detail to how the money is going to be spent this year, and as I mentioned, it’s already been in this year’s capital plan.

I’m not sure if the Member was listening earlier when I said it accumulates between 600 and 1,000 kilometres per week. I will get the number of times the vehicle travelled out to Behchoko, and we also have to remember, Mr. Chairman, that these vehicles are utilized also to transport juries when needed, and again, it’s very important that the sheriff’s office have this type of equipment to carry out their jobs. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to report positive results and trends from this government’s investments and initiatives in the NWT tourism sector.

The official tourism statistics for the last fiscal year will be available in late October but the preliminary results are promising. We are seeing a broad spectrum of interest in the tourism activities available in the Northwest Territories. In particular, the segment of visitors from China, who are commonly associated with aurora viewing, are exploring well beyond this sector.

For example, this past summer, 50 Chinese tourists travelled the Dempster...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I thank the Member for the question. With the limited capital dollars that we do have, we’ve done a lot of work at Prelude Lake and we will continue to put some dollars into Prelude Lake. Just to update Members, the marina at Prelude Lake boat launch, PWS plans to use a standing offer agreement with a marine engineer to draw technical specs for the mooring system and fabrication for the floating dock system that will complement the existing concept designs. We expect the engineering contract to be completed this month. These engineered drawings will go to tender later...