Caroline Wawzonek

Thank you, Madam Chair. Right now, obviously, the tourism infrastructure fund still sits at $200,000. It certainly has been oversubscribed, I think, in this last year, and efforts have been undertaken to, as I said earlier, move travel money and reallocating that to the areas that are in need, such as this one and such as some of the tourism products that have rolled out, whether GRIT or otherwise. The short answer is yes, but the longer answer is that it's coming in one project at a time right now. Right now, we are still closing out the end of this fiscal year and trying to utilize all of...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I don't have that in my mains. It's not something I have in front of me, other than to sort of rehash what was already discussed earlier this week about the costs of expanding the season for a month being into the tens of thousands of dollars, let alone the fact that there are contracts in place with operators and some simple physical facts about what they can or cannot do before the real thaw happens.

The question involved was towards what could be done in maybe the day parks as opposed to the camping parks. That's a new spin on the question. What I would like to...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I don't know if that's in the section I'm in right now. Perhaps I will see if Deputy Minister Strand has that information at her fingertips.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Perhaps I will suggest that Deputy Minister Strand can provide some analysis to that, please.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Hoping that she will have the most up-to-date numbers, I would suggest we go to Deputy Minister Strand, please.

Madam Chair, I don't know that I want to take away from much that was said. I am inclined to let it stand as a comment. The one issue there, Madam Chair, that I am hearing is around support for the Chamber of Mines. They are project-funded, and one of the major projects that they are funded for is, indeed, the Geosciences Forum, which is a headline feature event for the mineral resources sector in the North and had to go online this year, which certainly does not bring in the same sorts of revenue. Let me just direct it to Deputy Minister Strand to speak to what that may have done, if anything...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I know we are partnered and working with ECE on this, and my understanding is that they are the lead. Let me see if Ms. Strand has an update on when we can expect it. I know it has gone through a review by me, but I'm not sure where it's at for its final revisions.

Yes. Thank you, Madam Chair. There has been a sunset of funding there, which certainly doesn't suggest that there is not going to be an opportunity to renew that funding. That is right now under a program review, so it's our hope that we will be in a position to come back and request the renewal of the funding once that program review is done. In the meantime, Madam Chair, there is certainly an intention to continue to work towards mineral regional development strategies wherever possible. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Again, I think I may be putting my other hat on a little bit, but this isn't the recovery budget, per se. It's the "keep things afloat so that we can recover" budget. This is a good example of that, where a lot of the work that was and is happening with respect to advancing the mandate does happen. For ITI, to the extent that it's happening here, it continues to happen. The budgets haven't changed; they're still there and the work is moving forward. Again, with respect to COVID recovery, I will again defer and just say: more to come on that. Thank you, Madam Chair.