David Ramsay

Mr. Speaker, the Member makes it sound like we are not offering any services at North Slave Correctional Centre when it comes to spiritual and cultural health. We have elders that come to the facility that do sharing circles with the inmates, and we do that. We just don’t have, on staff, a permanent position. The coordinator position has been vacant, as I mentioned, since June, but that’s not to say that the centre isn’t still providing those types of opportunities for inmates that are at North Slave Correctional Centre. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We set up an office of the oil and gas regulator separate from the ITI department. It’s in a different building. It’s a stand-alone operation. I’ve delegated the day-to-day authority in most cases to the chief conservation officer, who is the executive director of our oil and gas regulator office, and we’ve set it up in a way that allows me to continue to do my job as Minister and also be the regulator. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker: I am pleased to report that earlier this month the Territorial Court of the Northwest Territories launched the Wellness Court, supported by a new Department of Justice Wellness Court Program.

The Wellness Court is an alternative to conventional court that focuses on the offender rather than the offence. This court, and the supporting program, provides intensive supervision and targeted programing for chronic offenders who have mental health issues, addictions or cognitive challenges that contribute to their criminal behaviour. With this program we hope to help offenders develop a...

Mr. Speaker, seizing vehicles has occurred in the past when it comes to bootleggers. It continues to be an option where it is feasible. We also have a memorandum of understanding with the Government of Canada in respect of sharing the proceeds and disposition of forfeited property, the sharing of the amounts paid or recovered on account of certain fines and sharing of certain monies transferred to Canada by the governments of foreign states. We have an MOU in place with the Government of Canada that allows us to share some of those funds. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The answer is yes. We have had that concern come up previously. We are currently talking to other jurisdictions about their experience with this. Some of the preliminary discussions we’ve had with other jurisdictions indicate that we really need to be careful, because in a lot of cases the cost to store the assets seized sometimes ends up costing more than the assets themselves at the end of the day.

We have some discussions ongoing with other jurisdictions and I am glad that the Member brought the issue up again today. Thank you.

Yes, we do support the development of agriculture in the Member’s riding and all ridings across the Northwest Territories. I’d encourage anybody from the Member’s communities, if they are interested in pursuing initiatives, to contact us at our South Slave office in Hay River and we’d be more than happy to help them out.

Mr. Speaker, in the 2013-2014 fiscal year, there was a tremendous increase in the number of visitors and visitor spending in the Northwest Territories, and today I would like to share details of this exciting growth with Members.

Last year we welcomed over 90,000 visitors. This is our highest number of visitors in the last decade and an increase of 20 percent from the previous year.

Visitor spending also rose by 24 percent to $132.5 million.

Tourism is this territory’s largest renewable resource-based sector and these numbers demonstrate that this government and our partners are on the right...

The success that we’ve seen in some other communities around the Northwest Territories has been initiated by a real community leader, somebody that is very interested in seeing that project advance. That’s why, as I mention earlier, the Farm Training Institute is so important, so that people can go to Hay River, get some training, go back to their communities and be real community leaders when it comes to developing agriculture in the communities.

Again, I’d ask the Member, if he’s got somebody in his community that is interested, we are here to help. We’d be more than happy to help community...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’ve made great strides when it comes to developing an agricultural industry here in the Northwest Territories. The Member has a good idea. I was with the Member recently this summer and we traveled down the river and there were farms historically near the community of Fort Providence. We’d certainly like to see some of that agricultural initiative renewed, and we have programs in place at ITI, working through our South Slave office, to support individuals in the Member’s community that want to get involved with agriculture. We’ve seen success stories around the...

I prefer my potatoes with mushrooms. Yes, if we can advance that idea, I would certainly support that idea.