Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to thank the Minister of Tourism, Bob McLeod, for his opening remarks today because it works well with my Member’s statement.
As the Minister has said, on April 1, 2011, the GNWT and NWT Tourism are set to launch their Tourism 2015: A New Direction for a Spectacular Future. Tourism 2015 builds on the Tourism 2010 Plan, as said earlier, and certainly makes an effort to continue the great opportunities that are available in our tourism market.
When the mayor of Edmonton was in Yellowknife a few weeks back, he asked why the GNWT doesn’t focus tourism campaigns on his particular city. I think the Minister today said it very well when he said they need to recognize our growth potential by targeting priority markets, and I don’t think it could be said better than that.
Mayor Mandel continued to say that he thought there would be significant interest in his city to have sort of a tourism initiative targeting his large city, which is simply a one and a half hour flight away, with a million people. He thought a lot of people there would be very interested in coming to the North.
For years Yellowknifers and all northern residents alike continue to flock to our southern gateways in Edmonton and Calgary and it’s about time we started seeing some of that return. Maybe a very precise and targeted tourism campaign could market to those particular cities to draw interest in the North.
We have a lot of tourism product here and I believe it would offer great variety to the southern residents to give them something unique and interesting to take home from memory. Many people talk throughout Canada about both Yellowknife and the North as truly on their particular bucket list of things to do before they sort of end their travel days. I would encourage the Minister of ITI to work with NWT Tourism to target those people who see the North as a particular area they wish to visit that, again, is on their bucket list. I can tell you from my experience of travelling over the years, that many people talk about the dream to come North and I would hope the Minister in today’s question period will talk about initiatives on how we can target Alberta, specifically Edmonton and Calgary, to draw more of them up, especially with them so close. That would be a great market to tap into.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
