Katrina Nokleby

Thank you, Madam Chair. At this moment, not that I am aware of. We are not exploring pipelines to Alberta at this time. I think that the department would confirm that. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. We do fund Northwest Territories Tourism, and they are offering free advertising to local and northern businesses. There are free ads going out. We have allowed Northwest Territories Tourism to take the lead on this. This is their deal, their thing they do and they do quite well. Yes, we are looking at that. We are also looking, honestly, through all of our communications with tourism operators in ways in which we can support them. Thank you, Madam Chair.

There is an annual GNWT contacts report that can be found on the Department of Finance website, and it does list all the GNWT contracts. However, it is a very large and not very easy document to handle. I see the Finance Minister shaking her head in agreement. I do envision that our review process will involve an additional analysis beyond just that reporting of contracts and development of sort of a metrics or system in which we can track and see if we are doing better.

It's great to say, "Oh, we've got northern business," but, if you don't have any comparison or really understand what the...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, I am open to having a conversation. Right now, I do know that we do have the northern residency requirement for some of these programs. All of the focus within the guidelines are for northern retention or use in the North. I do recognize, though, that you can tell people all you want that this is the way that you should do it, and if there are no teeth or penalties in there, then people will take advantage. I do commit to the Member to reviewing the program policies for myself and seeing where we can incorporate, I don't want to call it penalties, but...

Thank you, Madam Chair. In Gameti, we spent $18,536. In Whati, we spent $6,500. In Wekweeti, we spent $4,000. Now, you're going to make me know all of your communities. Sorry, I don't have them on here, so maybe I'll just ask Ms. St-Denis to confirm for the remainder of the Member's region. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I imagine this has something to do around liability, as our parks operators carry the liability insurance for the parks. We did look at, last year, a winter strategy in getting our parks opened. It's something that I am committed to revisiting now that I am the Minister of the department. I will definitely have a look at potentially a winter strategy coming up, especially if we are not going to be having our residents leaving the North to go do, maybe, some of those winter vacations, considering where we may be next year. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I believe the two-to-four-year timeline was towards the online staking that the Member was asking about, not about the plan. I think I will just ask Ms. Strand to answer this question. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I would just offer that that goes both ways. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I know with the BDIC loans that we just recently did, the first intake was only northern residents. Then we did have money left after that, so we opened to southern. For that particular instance, yes, they were the same. They are eligible for the tourism product funding. I would say that the answer there would be yes, but we do look at, when we are evaluating the proposals, how much the money is being spent in the North. It's not so much where the owner or the person making the proposal resides. It's about how much of that money is going to be retained in the North and...