David Ramsay

Thank you, Madam Chair. The department will collect revenues from the administration of our petroleum interests in the NWT and these include non-refundable rentals on the Pointed Mountain oil and gas leases held by Lone Pine Resources, issuance fees and fees for services under the Frontier Lands Registration Regulations, for instance, there’s a $250 fee for the issuance of an exploration licence, and rentals due to the Crown for exploration licences as well.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Part of that $150,000 earmarked for looking at LNG around the territory would include items like storage. It would also include looking at the possibility of getting LNG into other communities that have all-weather road access that are currently on diesel in the Northwest Territories, and that’s something that we continue to look at. Thank you.

The uptake has been very good in all regions across the Northwest Territories. For a breakdown of where the contributions have gone, we could get that for the Member, but in our estimation it’s been spread out across the territory and it is accessible by any school in the Northwest Territories.

Yes, we will try to do that in as short order as we can. In the meantime though, we do have opportunities for community members to take part in community hunts and community harvests under the Community Harvester Assistance Program, so if families wanted to get together and coordinate a trip out on the land to pursue traditional activities, there is currently programs and money available for them to do that.

Thank you. Again, it was important to keep the six positions in Hay River. There’s a lot of activity happening in the Sahtu and our anticipation is there will be a tremendous amount more activity happening in the Sahtu this coming summer and again next winter and into the foreseeable future. We’ve put positions into the Sahtu. As a government, as we move forward, we’ve made a commitment to look at decentralization and putting the nine positions for our petroleum office in Inuvik made sense to the government and what our objectives are. Thank you.

One of the things that was also clearly identified through our work on EOS was the fact that we needed to put more of an effort into tourism training and initiatives regarding tourism training, specifically on the hospitality side. Most of us have travelled. I mean, you always remember the great service that you got wherever you’re at. That’s what we want to see more of our operators have, the availability of getting that type of training for their staff, and that’s our effort on this, and again, it comes from the EOS.

Just following up on the Member’s comments on what makes people choose to...

Thank you, Madam Chair. That’s a gifted asset from AANDC. It’s the C.S. Lord Building with the geosciences. That’s what that accounts for. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I agree with the Member. First off, we need to look at opportunities to get communities off of diesel. In the instance of Deline, perhaps it is hydro. In other communities there may be other alternatives, as well, so we just have to keep looking at opportunities.

On the wood pellets, we haven’t heard of any concerns that the Member has raised. I know plans are moving forward for the establishment of a wood pellet plant located here in the Northwest Territories. If the Member has concerns over consumer protection, that would be through the Department of MACA. They have a...

We work through the Minister of International Trade, Minister Fast, on this file, and we do have our trade-offs here that are attached to this file. For some specific questions, if the Member has specific questions, again, we’d be happy to try to get a response for him.

Traditional activities out on the land are considered to be productive choices under the Income Assistance program. Certainly that’s something that I can continue to have discussions with my Cabinet colleagues on how we can go about getting some funding to allow people to get out and pursue the traditional economy out on the land.