Robert C. McLeod

We are working on the options now, and for me to say anything in here about those options would pre-empt our consultation with committee. We are going to have our meetings with committee and then through the business planning process, committee will have an opportunity for feedback to the government before we develop our main estimates for the May/June session. Committee will have an opportunity to see what some of the plans are for the upcoming budget. Then, during the business planning or the budget process, we have a number of different options in place as far as letting everyone know if...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, given the timing of the elections and the need to get our budget through, for this particular year our plan is to proceed with working with committee and we're hoping that we get a lot of feedback from the public through the Members of this Assembly. We've heard from a number of people their views on the budget, but given the timing of the election and our need to get the budget through, it was not in our plan to do an actual public consultation this year. However, that may change in the future when we have a bit more time to develop our business plan and...

The Canada Winter Games 2023 is a fantastic opportunity to showcase the city of Yellowknife and the Northwest Territories to those across the country with the national exposure it will get as far as media coverage goes. As far as a hotel levy, I think there are some amendments that need to be made to municipal legislation that would allow the local municipal governments to, through bylaw, create, collect, and administer levies on hotels. Until that legislation is done there is nothing stopping them from creating a destination-marketing fee that would apply only to the city or to each...

One of the things we need to remember is that it is seven years until the Canada Winter Games in 2023, and there are seven GNWT planning cycles prior to that. This gives us some time and flexibility to come up with the necessary funding to support our part of the Canada Winter Games.

I will follow up with Sport North and have a discussion with them as to the criteria that they use for the selection of their mission staff, and again, they are paying attention to the conversation that we're having in here today, so I'm sure that they will take steps to ensure that there's a greater regional balance and small community balance in the future.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we have an agreement with Sport North that manages our games. They put a call out for advertisements in the paper for mission staff for the games that are coming up. Apparently, this year they had 80 applications, and they chose them. My understanding is they wanted to get a bit of a regional balance and that too, so that's the process that they use for the selection of mission staff.

In the last number of years we've had to use some short-term borrowing, usually beginning of the fall, as our expenditures continue to out-strip our revenues. This is not an option that we want to use too often. I mean, the option's there, we will take advantage of it, but our goal at the end of the day is to ensure that our expenditures don't exceed our revenue.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We will be tabling a revenue options paper early in this session that we had an opportunity to share with Committee, and it points out a number of options we're looking at as far as increasing our revenue.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to table the following three documents entitled “Interim Estimates, 2016-2017”; “Supplementary Estimates (Infrastructure Expenditures), No. 4, 2015-2016”; and “Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 3, 2015-2016.” Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I would have to have a discussion with Sport North. If you look at the names that came forward and the communities that they were from, I mean the Member's correct, there were a number of communities that weren't included in this. A lot of the folks chosen were from some of the regional centres. I can have that discussion with them and see if there are ways that we can include a lot of the smaller communities. They look at, as I said before, they want a regional-type balance, a gender balance, and they try to get as many people that have been involved in sports before. But I take the Member's...