Wally Schumann

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am pleased to introduce Bill 7: An Act to Amend the Revolving Funds Act. The proposed bill would amend the Revolving Funds Act to establish a new revolving fund for the Yellowknife Airport with an authorized limit of $36 million. The purpose of this fund would be to support the ongoing capital and operations and maintenance expenditures of the Airport.

With the establishment of a revolving fund, all revenues generated by the Yellowknife Airport would be retained by the airport, eliminating our reliance on Government of the Northwest Territories subsidies to improve this...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. No, none of that revenue goes back to any of the airports. It all goes back into general revenue, and ends up there through the business planning process. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I thank the Member for asking that, because I misspoke when I said it was $300,000 increase to medical travel. It's a $300,000 incremental cost, the total expenditures of the Government of the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. When we looked at the business plan, we looked at all the economic opportunities that come along with this. As I have said, for every $1 million, 3.5 jobs will be created. The offset would create 14 jobs, but if you look at the business plan, there are cargo opportunities that would become available, with consultation with a number of these stakeholders, the 30-something groups that we have met with. That is one area of a particular increase of business opportunities, moving forward. There has probably been a number of people, I believe, already who have talked about...

As I’ve said, we’ve worked with Transport Canada to leverage the dollars to monitor and assess the performance of this road with the conditions that we’re presently under. Like I said, with climate change, it makes it very difficult to keep up with the maintenance of it, especially with the lack of capital dollars that we have available to us to do this; but we will continue to do our research and monitoring this road and try to come up with new rehabilitative techniques on how we’re going to address this problem moving forward. I can keep Members informed on some of those test results from...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m always willing to have input from anyone in the Northwest Territories, including Members from the other side or my colleagues along this side of the table. It’s just going to take all of us to make a better territory for everybody, especially around manufacturing.

ITI will gladly follow the prescribed process of GNWT to develop legislations and strategies moving forward and prior to its public release. I don’t have a problem having a sit down with committee and getting their input and review the document before it’s released.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I have said, we have a number of new initiatives, along with the old ones, to help promote tourism in the Northwest Territories. If the Member would like, I can have the regional superintendent for ITI to go in there and have a discussion with the community on how they can leverage some of these dollars and programs, to reach the potential that they desire.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the Member knows, moving forward we are going to have an advisory board who would be advising us, along with other stakeholders, and this information will be coming forward and this is something that we can look at doing around that after Bill 7 is approved.

We are always looking at ways of investing in the regions to promote tourism. I can sit down with the Member and have a conversation with him on what the community envisions in moving that forward, and seeing what program that we have within the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment will help fit the bill, to help them realize their dream of tourism there.