Wally Schumann

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, I don't have a problem updating the House off of the top of my head here. We had a full slate of meetings over the last couple of days. We had an NWT event where we got to speak and have a bunch of panel discussions with NWT Indigenous corporations and industry. The Premier and I also attended and I got to be the keynote speaker at a CanNor event around CanNor's continued funding in the federal budget moving forward.

I have met with a number of stakeholders, toured the trade show booths, had an opportunity to meet with a number of people there, as well, and had an...

As I've said, we are very concerned about this. When we went out and did our public consultation, some of the biggest things we heard is the cost of living and how it relates to our economy and how we're going to move these initiatives forward. We have to be very careful, and, at the same time, we have to meet our commitments that we've signed on to. As I've said, this is all a whole bunch of departments working together on how they pull these things together, and a big part of it is going to be our federal infrastructure dollars and how it rolls out and how do we invest those dollars and our...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, I believe we can do both, and the Member is right. We signed on to the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change and the Paris Accord Agreement. These are commitments that we have made as a government. We are moving on those. We are moving on these strategies. They're all in lock sync. The Energy Strategy, the Petroleum Resource Strategy, and the Climate Change Strategic Framework is coming out. They're in lock sync together. All of these departments have been working very closely together. It's a complicated issue when all of a sudden we shift our...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Even this month coming up, we're going to have our first-ever tourism conference on March 21st and 22nd in Tulita, and we're doing that in partnership with Indigenous Tourism Association of Canada. So kudos to Tulita for hosting that here in the next couple of weeks. We've talked in this House about a number of programs and supports we have around tourism, and all the people within the Sahtu region and the NWT can access those, as well. Lately, we've supported a couple of business initiatives in his riding in particular: a paddleboard business, ski trails, cabin...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the Member stated, with the high numbers, no, we are not going to change the way we are looking at this. We believe that our approach to this whole thing coming forward is showing that our strategy of tourism 2020 is actually working for the Northwest Territories and it's showing great success. We're on track to hit our $207 million spent by tourism by 2021.

As I've said in this House just recently, our numbers are up, hitting record-breaking numbers again. The NWT marketing plan, which I tabled last week, is a big part of that equation, as well.

To those comments, I want to say a couple of things, first of all, before I talk about the Mineral Resource Act. I have talked to many exploration companies and mining companies in the Northwest Territories, and this, for the most part, this is a very fictitious story, that our regulatory process is one that hinders exploration and development in the NWT. Yes, it has certainty around it. We have the federal side of it that we are trying to get control of through devolution. The Aboriginal governments have their process, but, at the end of the day, when you go through our process, it is lengthy...

As the Member knows, we have our staff within ITI to help them do that, but every time I have been to either Roundup or PDAC, I have made specific trips to Toronto to meet with industry stakeholders about investing in the Northwest Territories. It became quite clear to me early on, when I got this portfolio, about lack of information around devolution in particular, about the land and resources being transferred from the federal government to the Government of the Northwest Territories, that everywhere we go, no matter which one of us sits on this side of the House, we continually have to...

Yes, industry is a big part of our consultation process as industry is one of the biggest parts of our GDP of our Government of the Northwest Territories, so we have to consider their factors in, as well.

When we start talking about industry, I tend to lean a little bit more towards the mining side because they're the biggest part of our economy right now. We've taken their concerns into serious consideration on how we're moving this forward. There has been some great talk with them specifically around the carbon tax and how this is going to make implications on them. At the same time, we have...

While I believe we're already doing it because climate change is already here. When I'm speaking down south, I don't say climate change is something that's coming; it has already impacted the Northwest Territories. As a number of Members in this House know, we continue to say that it's already warmed up by 4 degrees in some parts of the Northwest Territories. So, as the Ministry of Infrastructure, in particular, we know the challenges around climate change. We have changes around construction, around maintenance, around building of ice roads, operation of government infrastructure, and that's...

The Member is well-aware that the remediation of the Canol Trail is the responsibility of the federal government. We continue to hold their feet to the fire on that, but the federal government has tendered out the next step of this contract. It has been awarded, and remediation is expected to begin next summer on that project. Since 2015, the Government of Canada and Dodo Toi Territorial Park has through us, I guess, and working with the Park Corporation cleaned up 350 kilometers of telephone wire along that trail, and that project has been completed as of last summer. This year, we're going...