Caroline Wawzonek

Thank you, Madam Chair. I mean, there certainly are funds from CanNor that do come through at various points for various initiatives. Let me see if the deputy minister can speak to whether she knows what they may have funded for the City of Yellowknife.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I completely agree. There is the Tourism NWT conference bureau that sits within NWT Tourism. What I'd suggest is perhaps ensuring that there's a more direct connection between the conference bureau, which admittedly was not seeing a significant amount of incoming conferences here during COVID but is back to work now and looking forward. So perhaps making sure that they can confirm with me, again on my list of things I want to talk to them about, that they have a direct liaison to the Town of Fort Smith and to the facilities that are there. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, I don't think there's an active recruitment for staffing right now, but I can say that there's quite a bit of work happening with the Tu Cho Fishers Cooperative as well as with FFMC to ensure that those players and parties are all involved, that there's no overlapping work going on but that, in fact, everyone's working together. The goal, again, is to have this plant open and operational for the fishing season, including with having a manager and including having the staffing available. I, in fact, only spoke to FTI about this yesterday and had a very...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I'd like to send this to the deputy minister to give a bit more of a sense about where it's been and where it's going. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I mean, some of this will be owing to historical funding arrangement. I would note with respect to Northwest Territories Tourism as an organization specifically, the function of providing marketing and promotion of tourism was handed over to Northwest Territories Tourism. So they do get a larger proportion of funding in that respect because they don't have some of the programs and services or rather, they are undertaking programs and services that used to at one time be done by the GNWT and therefore are an organization that is actively acting in our stead whereas ITI...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I am well aware that there are other fish plants and thrilled that there are other fish plants. We are not even remotely close to meeting our quota of fishing of freshwater fish here in the Northwest Territories. There's ample opportunity. If anything, I think our challenge is more on the side of having more fishers. And we certainly will make that point to raise this issue. I think the deputy minister actually may have an opportunity as early as tomorrow. If this comes up, she's at FFMC's meeting tomorrow just to make that they are aware of the complexity of...

 Thank you, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, I am happy to speak about the fish plant. There is quite a lot of activity underway and senior members from the department were, in fact, in Hay River just recently, and we are still anticipating a summer or early spring opening to the fish plant. It'll be commissioned in the spring with an opening to follow I believe in line with the summer fishing season. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, that is something that is a ITI lead but it is worked on, as I mentioned earlier, a shared area with Department of ENR as well. And right now it's under ITI as there's a discussion paper out for comment and review, and it would certainly be helpful if more people would look at it and provide their comments and feedback to it. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So there certainly is I mean, there's going to be some work that is still underway that for example, there's still management of assets. There's still monitoring of areas where interest is being held. The staff in Inuvik are also working on the mineral development mineral resources mineral resource regulations development. There is M18, as noted. So it's not necessarily a traditional sense of out drilling oil rigs. There's still a fair bit of work that needs to be undertaken and that is undertaken by this office. And as I'm saying this, there's a flood of information...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, so, firstly, just quickly with respect to agrifood, I am conscious of the Member's time but I'm actually at their association AGM next Friday and so certainly can follow up immediately and make note of the fact that this has been brought to our attention with respect to reporting to see exactly what the issue is.

And with respect then to the position for the fisheries, it is, indeed, a sunset but that is in part I think there was an expectation that the position was going to seconded to the Tu Cho for two years and in fact now the position is just changing in...