Mr. Speaker, my question is to the Minister of ITI in terms of our recent meetings down in Vancouver and more particularly to the media people that were interested in the Northwest Territories such as the German newspaper and the Chinese television people there. They talked about the Northwest Territories and particularly important to the media person from Germany in terms of the tourism. I want to ask the Minister, in terms of the feedback that we received that was very positive from the media outlet in terms of promoting a place to visit, the Northwest Territories, is the Minister taking this type of feedback from the media outlet to track visitors from European or Asian countries, in terms of strengthening our territorial parks? The German newspaper did talk about, you know, is there a road and when are you going to build a road -- Mackenzie Valley Highway -- to get into the valley here? Is the Minister going to be looking at a type of new strategy in terms of how do we attract visitors from Germany or the Asian countries?
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Minister responsible for Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. Bob McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think the benefit of Canada’s Northern House is our interaction with national and international media. Certainly the interview we did with the German reporter gave us a lot of insight as to what the German people would find of interest in visiting the Northwest Territories, understanding that there are a lot of German tourists already visiting the Northwest Territories. Basically I think we understand that Yukon has direct flights from Germany to Whitehorse and so they get a lot of German tourists in that fashion. So I think that is an area that we are, and have been, investigating and we do have a person that is working on our behalf in Europe to promote tourism to the Europeans, because that’s a very important sector. I believe that, as a reporter said, if we can get the Germans that are in Whitehorse, drive to Yellowknife, then fly back to Germany would be a tremendous attraction. So, certainly, we want to examine that possibility.
I was particularly interested with respect to this reporter when he was doing the interview with us talking about the unknown Sahtu region. The German people are very avid hikers. He talked about the hiking that could be done in the Northwest Territories. He was very interested in how to get into the Sahtu. He talked about the Mackenzie Valley Highway. In terms of that type of interest out there and attracting European visitors, would the Minister, with respect to all the feedback we’ve received regarding the Northwest Territories, take this to look at a strategy that will attract infrastructure and facilities in the regions that maybe we could have more visitors?
We recognize that the Sahtu, the proposed CANOL Park, and the roads to Mile 222 are very spectacular. I think if we can work it out so that the German tourists who come off the plane and jump into RVs and drive down the road that we can find a way to get them to stop close to the NWT border and come into the Territories to do a hike,. I think if we can establish that type of product it would be very successful.
One comment I heard at the Northern House was they hope they can come to Yellowknife, jump on a plane, and visit a diamond mine. It really intrigues them, these diamond mines. That was one comment. We’re getting that type of interest at Northern House. I want to ask the Minister with respect to promoting the Sahtu that it would be nice to have these German people hike the CANOL Trail, jump in a boat, go up the Bear River to visit the birthplace of ice hockey in Canada here, as we promoted it. It took a lot and had a lot of interest from the southern papers there in terms of this claim to fame here. I want to ask the Minister to see how much promotional awareness we have started over there to get this done in Northern House in terms of working with the people in this House here and the community of Deline.
We want to develop all of those tourism opportunities. Anything that will attract people to the Northwest Territories I think is very important. The amount of interest that was generated with regard to promoting Deline as the birthplace of hockey, there was a lot of interest in it and I think that will probably have reaction to it. I guess we’ll see what kind of media exposure we’ll get. I expect we’ll get some articles about it and I think that you’ll have to be prepared to defend that claim.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Certainly I’m prepared to lace up with the Minister of ITI and defend this claim to fame in terms of the birthplace of ice hockey in Canada. I want to ask the Minister in terms of all the good publicity we have and now with the Olympics that are going to start, I think it’s going to somewhat scale back and the focus is going to be on the athletes in that once we finish this whole event that’s happening in Vancouver we’ll be sitting down and looking at a bigger picture strategy in terms of how to go forward and continuing on the good work that this department has done on promoting the Northwest Territories. How do we go forward in bringing people into the Northwest Territories? Will we have a bigger strategy?
We are close to completing our Tourism 2010 Plan and we will be taking all the information we hear or are hearing from Canada’s Northern House and we are working with NWT Tourism to develop a 2015 tourism plan. Using that approach we will endeavour to take all these opportunities into account. Also, as the Member recognized yesterday, we were getting a lot of interest from the international media to come up and find out more about the Northwest Territories so that they can promote it even further.
