Recent years have seen an explosion of tourism, and I believe the Minister talked about that in his statement earlier today, and a lot of this a related to aurora viewing. Can the Minister give us some idea in the growth in the number of Yellowknife operators and licences in recent years?

Merci, Monsieur le President. My questions are for the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment; and my apologies, well, I can't.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the assistance of the law clerk. I still think that this is going to create some uncertainty and may lead to something being marched off to court, where the better solution is to just remove any temporal restriction on the mandate of the Ombud.

I am concerned that this will still act as a deterrent to individuals who wish to bring forward complaints. I guess I want to go on the public record as saying that, whoever the Ombud is, if this passes, I would encourage them to take the broadest possible interpretation of their mandate, that anything that has started...

I think there may be a motion coming forward on this. The last point I want to make is that this kind of restriction on the mandate of the Ombud sends out all of the wrong signals to the public, and I think it will deter people from coming to this officer for trying to resolve their issues with our government. I just don't think it serves the public interest. Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Is there any intention then on the part of Cabinet to broaden the exclusions that are set out in the Act using regulations? Is there any intention to do that at this time? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Yes, I guess committee heard other information from, and I believe my colleague from Kam Lake, the chair of the committee, talked about how one hotel chain put together information based on industry-wide standards. It had indicated that there would be about a little more than $1.1 million with the existing exclusions. By my rough calculations, GNWT excluding itself, that would immediately reduce the revenue stream by about 25 percent. That's okay.

You know, my position, I think, is that there should be no exclusions. That's familiar treatment, that everybody pays the airport...

Thank you. Thanks, Mr. Chair. I appreciate that. Why did the department include GNWT, then, in the exclusions here? Did they actually calculate how much this tourism accommodation tax would cost the government? Let's start with: why did the government exempt themselves from this tax in the bill that has come forward? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Merci, Monsieur le President. I would like to thank the Minister for that, his emphasis on consultative processes, but when important information is not made available, it's withheld, it doesn't help those processes.

The report contains a lot of very helpful comparisons and lessons learned about benefit retention and other jurisdictions. This work may have played, should have played, a major role in the development of the Mineral Resources Act. In fact, it was within the scope of the discussion paper that was released. Given my difficulties in prying this report from his department, can the...

I would like to thank the Minister for that, but it is very clear this report was only made public after I filed an access to information request, and he publicly promised to provide it.

The government publicly launched consultations on the Mineral Resources Act on August 2, 2017, four months after this report was received. The news release announcing the consultations quotes the Minister saying, "It is our duty to maximize the benefits of responsible resource development."

With this stated objective and the requests of public stakeholders and Regular MLAs for this type of information, why was...

Merci, Monsieur le President. Yesterday I tabled a 2017 report contracted by the Industry, Tourism and Investment Department called "Policies for Generating Socioeconomic Benefits from Natural Resource Extraction Projects." This report shows how jurisdictions around the world make sure their citizens get a fair share of benefits from non-renewable resources extraction.

Unfortunately, this report received by the ITI 18 months ago was only recently posted deep on the department's website because I forced this government to make it public through an access to information request. Committee was not...