Wally Schumann

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.

I believe it is very rare. It's unfortunate this incident happened, in this particular case, but I think it's very rare that there are people around the airport that late at night. Typically, I believe the department would probably be telling people if it was closing down, and then they would be making arrangements to get to a hotel or make other arrangements. It's an inopportune situation, but at present the airport is closed between 2:00 and 3:30 in the morning.

Mr. Speaker, the Government of the Northwest Territories made a commitment in its mandate to support mineral exploration and the mining sector by implementing the Mineral Development Strategy.

I rise today to update my colleagues on our progress. Mr. Speaker, the Mineral Development Strategy has five pillars: creating a competitive edge; establishing a new regulatory environment; enhancing Aboriginal engagement and capacity; promoting sustainability; and enriching workforce development and public awareness.

In our work to create a competitive edge for mining in the NWT, we have placed incentives...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The department hasn't taken a determination on this point yet. We are looking out for ideas and stuff. We are currently looking at other jurisdictions, as I have said, across Canada before we roll this out. We will probably be conducting a review and undertaking an analysis on a royalty regime across Canada.

The department is actually conducting research right now on how we are going to move forward. I don't think anything is locked down because we are going to have to go through consultation, public engagement. We are going to have to go in front of standing committee. There are a number of things that we are going to have to do that are going to guide this document as we move forward. We are welcome to any suggestions.

The department regularly evaluates the condition of the. We have our maintenance crews that travel up and down the highway daily to gather information daily. They give us feedback on that. We have, as I said, our test sections that are out there, but to get out for safety is the number one priority of the transportation system in the Northwest Territories. We use a number of initiatives to reach out to people in the Northwest Territories and people visiting NWT, as I think and believe the Member talked yesterday in the House about how we’re going to get our message out there, be it Twitter...