Robert Hawkins

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Time and time again you hear issues raised from this side of the House and they continue to be pushed away. As said quite clearly by my colleague Mr. Menicoche, we raise issues because they are of community interest and they are important. The relentless pursuit of these community and constituency issues will continue regardless of the deaf ears on the Cabinet side of this House.

When we speak about health board issues, education board issues, Power Corporation board issues, Liquor Board issues, municipal issues, or even housing board issues, we’re not speaking just for...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment:

Please identify the grants and contributions provided to the Barren-Ground Outfitters for the fiscal years, 2006-2007, 2007-2008 and 2008-2009.

Can the Minister also identify the purpose of each grant and/or contribution to those outfitters?

Can the Minister provide any accountability measures required by the grants and contributions?

I want to thank the Premier for highlighting all of Cabinet’s priorities and the issue I raised last week like Mildred Hall, Sisson’s needs renovations and those are the priorities of those school boards. As my colleagues Mr. Krutko and Mr. Menicoche have said, priorities of communities saying they want health nurses. Mr. Speaker, these are priorities that are found, they’re born, developed and brought forward from the communities to this Legislature. Those are the issues. How do we make them priorities of this House? Because Members here are trying to raise priorities in our communities and...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in my Member’s statement today I talked about the relationship of this House and how we propose ideas and sometimes, if not most of the time, we feel like they get shot down. Mr. Speaker, I am going to have questions for the Premier, who I think is best suited for this type of question.

Mr. Speaker, I try to be a stalwart defender of consensus government, but sometimes, if not most of the time, it feels like it’s a one-way valve. I would like to ask the Premier what he does to advocate particular issues on our behalf when we raise them such as new schools or...

We know the money is chopped up at the Cabinet table but we will not stand for this. We need Cabinet to realize we have priorities that represent our communities and constituencies and they’re very important. When an MLA brings forward an issue, quite often you’ll hear from the Ministers a relentless defence of it and you’ll hear the Five-D Approaches, as I like to call it: the Minister will defend, defer, delay, and sometimes deflect and defy the issue over and over. I had to add another one because they divide the House on the issue. The Ds just keep rolling.

When do you hear from the Cabinet...

Mr. Speaker, I called several weeks ago that we organize in such a way that we deal with the politics of this type of issue and both the outcry and the fall-out that could happen. So, Mr. Speaker, I’m just trying to get clarity on what type of meeting the Minister is having. Like, what type of format, what are the objectives of this meeting, and what is the goal of this particular meeting? Unlike what I had suggested, a caribou summit to discuss the issue to work together. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I like the phrase of the Minister “preparing for the invasion of tourism,” but I would encourage the Minister not to count them until he sees the whites of their eyes crossing our border.

But, Mr. Speaker, how do we find out if this investment is working? That’s what I really want to make sure, is that all the investment done at the Northern House and all the work being done to attract tourism, how are linking it to any type of results to ensure that type of investment will be long-term dividends to our northern economy? One dollar spent anywhere in the North helps the...

Mr. Speaker, that’s certainly good news. In the riding of Yellowknife Centre there are a lot of small businesses and they certainly rely significantly on this infusion of tourist dollars and, as we all know, the Territory’s economy relies seriously on the infusion of new types of dollars. Could the Minister elaborate a little further to what he means by looking at extending the Fred Henne Territorial Park to accommodate RV tourism, that type of sector? Can he elaborate to basically explain size, what dollar investment and when we can expect something? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This winter the Northwest Territories has received a great amount of promotion and attention as a place to visit for tourism. For the first week of the Olympics, over 70,000 people had the pleasure of visiting Canada’s Northern House, which, as many Members in this House will know, was a joint effort between the Government of the Northwest Territories, Nunavut and the Yukon. This gives people the chance to learn about northern culture, crafts, tourism, and opportunities to travel to the Northwest Territories and Canada’s North.

Mr. Speaker, I had the pleasure of visiting...

In that particular case, the Minister probably wouldn’t be opposed to a motion to that effect. I mean, ultimately constituents of mine are more concerned about making sure the project gets done and that it stays on the rails, as well as the fact this timely information becomes the biggest issue. So, Mr. Chairman, with that I’d probably like to move a motion and shall I read it right into the record now?