Wally Schumann

Mr. Speaker, this is tourism week in the Northwest Territories and is an opportunity to celebrate the unprecedented growth that we have nurtured and witnessed during our time as the 18th Legislative Assembly. During the life of this Legislative Assembly, visitor numbers in the Northwest Territories have increased by more than 30 percent. This includes a 61-percent increase in Aurora tourism. Our tourism sector is now worth over $203 million, a 48-percent increase in spending over the last five years, and led by a 75-percent growth in spending by leisure tourists, travellers.

As our government...

Hay River has limited capacity to store all of the fuel that we ship up and down the system, so we have to work hand-in-hand with our supplier to meet the demands of our shipping season. We will continue to do that. It impacts our barge deliveries for the communities.

As I said, forest fires and stuff like that can have a large impact on the system. We are very concerned about the low waters this year. That is already right across the system, but we don't believe that will impact the deliveries to the Sahtu region, because that is before the Sansu Rapids. We are monitoring this situation very...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This sailing season has already been posted online. Everyone is welcome to have a look at it. These are subject to change, of course, due to climatic change and other variables that we would be out of control of.

At this present moment we are planning to go to Norman Wells three times this year; June, July, and August. We are looking at going to Tulita twice this year, in July and August, as well. To inform Members of this House and the people of the general public, the terminal in Hay River is now open, accepting cargo for all communities across the Northwest...

As I have said, this year particularly we have moved up our scheduled sailing dates and resupply for the communities. For long-term plans, we are working closely with the Canadian Coast Guard. We have reached out to them about how we can work more closely on the situation that could potentially arise in the Beau-Del again, particularly up on the Emerson Coast. This is something that we need to try to avoid, and we need to work very closely with them and their sailing schedule as well, to align with what we are trying to do, to resupply the communities.

I think that I have mentioned in this...

As all of the Members know, we have had a challenging year there last year with the issue that happened in the Beau-Del. We are focusing our efforts on high-quality and timely resupply services. We are going to have to focus on a number of efforts across the system, what we are going to have to do to ensure that we will be able to improve resupply. One of those particular measures is trying to get out earlier this year with our ships; that is why the sailing season has been altered a little bit.

Now, again, as I said, some of this is subject to stuff that is out of our control. The supplier of...

Mr. Speaker, in the Northwest Territories, responsible resource development is at the core of who we are. It drives our economy, has generated billions in opportunities for northern and Indigenous-owned businesses, and provides thousands of jobs to residents.

Our natural resource wealth is not limited to minerals. We also have some of the world's largest reserves of natural gas and oil, both onshore and offshore, and these resources, if developed safely and responsibly, will result in significant long-lasting benefits and returns for NWT residents.

Mr. Speaker, as part of advancing the...

I would like to update this House that we are already looking at this. We are investigating this potential of renewable diesel technologies. The one thing I can say is that there is one contractor supplying western Canada and confirmed that it has been deployed in one major city, which is probably the City of Vancouver.

We have concerns over this thing. When I talked to the deputy about this specific possibility, we were worried about the life cycle of this stuff and the storage capacity that we have in the communities and how long it will be good for. It is way more expensive than the price of...

I would love to update the House on this particular question. We have met with SSi Micro and, actually, our staff have gone to the community of Fort Providence to understand the system that SSi actually has in place right now and to discuss the potential for integration of a microgrid into the technologies into the system. We are interested in learning a lot more about what SSi has to offer, about their proposal and the potential of their graphite battery, specifically what they have proposed to use as an energy recovery and disbursement system in their system. We will continue to work with...

All engineers and technicians within the department have a professional obligation to keep track of the latest developments in their fields of expertise. We sponsor regular training and host a major conference to address current issues, including climate change. We also send our experts to conferences and working groups with their counterparts to review climate change issues at the national and regional levels, and we undertake risk analysis on all our major projects to ensure climate change resilience is addressed and also incorporated into climate consideration into all our operational...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We are tracking the water levels carefully and monitoring changes. We have been in contact with the federal government about dredging to maintain navigational channels, which I talked about yesterday. For ice and ferry crossings, we have already converted some permanent bridges, and over the long term will continue to work toward converting them to permanent crossings. In the meantime, we have looked at alternative landing and crossing roads which may extend or stabilize the seasons.