I guess I’ll give you a breakdown of the $4.250 million. Lutselk’e mini-hydro there’s $2.8 million; Whati hydro transmission line, $250,000; Sahtu hydro assessment, $200,000; and expansion of residual heat. The other projects are dependent on funding being made available, but generally the process that we follow is we track our expenditures and we report on a regular basis on our budget for energy priority investments to the coordinating committee and if there are any adjustments to the energy priority investments, it’s approved at that level. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Again, I didn’t catch the one in regard to the amount of money that’s been spent on the expansion of residual heat. Could you explain that or elaborate on that funding allocation? I didn’t catch that one.
We’re proposing $1 million for 2011-12.
Thank you, Minister McLeod. Mr. Krutko.
I’m good.
Thank you, Mr. Krutko. I have nobody else on my list for 12-22, Industry, Tourism and Investment, activity summary, energy, grants and contributions, contributions, $5.500 million.
Agreed.
Next is 12-23, Industry, Tourism and Investment, information item, energy, active positions.
Agreed.
Page 12-25, tourism and parks. Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a couple of quick questions on this section. When Education, Culture and Employment was in front of us I asked some questions about some of the things you’re doing. One of the things you’re doing is supporting arts and culture, obviously through things like the NWT Arts Society and whatnot, and I’m about to say something I know the Minister has heard from me before, but when it comes to tourism supporting the arts is a great advantage. I mean, people are looking for reasons to come to the North, people are looking for activities and, yes, we have aurora and, yes, we have some of the most beautiful land on the planet and, yes, we have a lot of cultural activities going on, but we can’t exclude art and those types of things. Musicians, festivals, arts conferences, arts fairs.
In my opening comments I was happy to see that there is some increase in your SEED program for artists, but not performers and I think in the tourism area by supporting our artists and finding ways to partner with them and have them act as our champions is a good thing. It’s good for the artists, it’s good for the Northwest Territories because it will draw attention and those musicians and painters and authors and whatnot could be brilliant ambassadors for us. We’ve got Make Your Mark right now, which I think is a fairly decent program, but if we had some of our local talent out there making their mark as well and supporting them, I think we’d be getting a real bang for our buck in that area.
So with the new Tourism Strategy that just came out, what are we doing to work with Education, Culture and Employment who has invested a lot of money in our artists to find partnership opportunities to work with them, including Education, Culture and the artists and have these people work as ambassadors or out there pushing their art, but pushing the Northwest Territories as well?
Minister of Tourism.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. We work very closely with Education, Culture and Employment to promote all artists, whether it’s visual artists or performing artists and I think we’ve been very successful in doing so. Some of the promotions that we’ve done, we’ve continued to support artists, but also I’ve had many accolades from performing artist who have accessed funding through the SEED program so that they can go out to different festivals. Some of them even go to storytelling festivals in Hawaii and so on.
In addition to that, we also maintain an NWT artists database. We have an NWT Arts Branding Logo Program. We do NWT community consultations. We do arts promotions, art displays. We have an NWT Film Commission. We have a new strategic initiative, Support for NWT Arts Programs and Services, and we have some financial support to the SEED program. We have an NWT artists’ news line/newsletter. We have a toll-free line and we are developing a plan that will identify marketing tactics and strategies to focus on marketing and promotion of NWT artists from across the Northwest Territories in all genres of the arts to maximize potential and exposure of northern talent nationally and internationally. ITI and ECE have contracted Points North and Kellett Communications to prepare a plan for consideration by the departments. We expect a final report by the end of February of this year. Then we will have recommendations made to both the Ministers. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to the Minister for that. Everything you just said is great and fantastic. I’m really excited by the last point you made about this last project you’re putting together to find ways to market. I think that’s brilliant and I’m really looking forward to seeing that. That’s the type of thing I’ve been talking about since I got here, is these people have a valuable product and partnering with them I think will prove dividends. So I’m very excited about that.
Just in closing, I spend a lot of time looking at the products that we’re putting out there by way of Spectacular and stuff like that, and it’s great product. I’m very happy with Spectacular, but I’d like to open the Tourism NWT with our Spectacular logos on it and I’d like to see some of the pictures and links to where some of these artists are, pictures of the artists. Let’s highlight them, let’s work with them. Also, links to their websites, links to where we can see their products, links to where these individuals live so that people who are coming up here can find them and get in and see some of their product and hopefully spend some of their money here. I love it when people from outside of Yellowknife spend their money here. I think it’s brilliant and anything we can do to encourage people to come and spend some money, even if it’s flowing money into the pockets of the artists, that money will be circulated here, it’s brilliant.
So that last point, I’m very happy to hear that and I’m really looking forward to seeing that product and I hope you share it with us as quickly as you guys share it with yourselves. Thank you.
We work very closely with NWT Tourism, which is our marketing arm, and we’ll make sure that they have all these links, if they don’t already have them, and we’ll commit to sharing the results of this report as soon as we get it. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Next I have Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a question with regard to parks and parks revenue. I noticed on the revenue page that our revenue was down considerably and I believe I heard the Minister say that it had to do with, or I think the explanation is that it has to do with interest. I didn’t see any indication in the revenue page of revenue from parks. Is there revenue and, if so, how much is there? Thank you.
Minister of Tourism.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Most of our revenue from parks we work out arrangements through the parks operator and it’s sort of like on a commission basis and I think that’s why it doesn’t show up on the revenue sheet. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Okay, I wondered if that was why, but the Minister said most of the revenue. So if there is some revenue from parks, do we just sweep it under the mat, or is it recorded elsewhere? Thank you.
The operation of parks is by contract and I guess what I meant was they don’t collect enough revenues to pay for all of the contract. So they collect revenues and then they get a top-up from the department is generally how we work with our contractors. Thank you.
Thanks for that explanation. I did note, I think it was in the Minister’s opening remarks, he said that bookings at parks are up. Could I get an estimation of by what percentage and does it... Even though our bookings are up, we still are not obviously, from the sounds of things, covering the costs of contractors. Can I get that confirmed, please? Thank you.
Our bookings are up by 5 percent and the revenues still don’t cover the cost of the contractors, because at one time we were looking at privatizing all of the parks but we weren’t able to do it. Thank you.
Thank you. Next I have Mr. Yakeleya.
Mr. Chair, I wanted to speak to a little bit of my experience on the CANOL Trail. I just love being out there on the CANOL Trail and hoping that we would have a future Do et’q Territorial Park. This area is very special to the people in the Sahtu and I recommend that some of my colleagues here have some time to take a hike on the trail there and see the beauty there. It would be good for all of us to be out on the land there. However, Mr. Chair, there’s a serious threat to the proposed territorial park and that’s the ATVs, the all-terrain vehicles, as I spoke to earlier, that’s destroying some of the pristine beauty of the future territorial park, especially the tires from these vehicles are grinding up the muskeg, they’re exposing permafrost and the trail now is turning into mud. It damages the plants and the lichens in those areas.
Mr. Chair, I want to ask the Minister, under the Territorial Parks Act, they offer protection in our parks in allowing motor vehicles except in designated areas. I wanted to ask, because the CANOL is not yet a territorial park -- it’s been proposed -- if there’s any type of interim protection that he can work with his colleagues to see if there could be some restrictions of ATVs in this area here. Thank you.
Minister of Tourism.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. We have tried a number of different things. We communicated with the federal government, who are the land managers. They have responded in writing indicating they are not prepared to take any action to stop ATV drivers. We have committed to preparing signs to advise the four-wheelers of the importance and sensitive nature of the park. We’re also trying to educate the four-wheelers that come up there. I think we’ve been in contact with the group that was there previously and I think they were planning to come up, but then they realized the sensitive nature and I understood that they had communicated they weren’t coming back.
I think that with regard to the cleanup, a lot of work still has to be done. We’ve been working with affected communities so that they can get contracts to do the cleanup work, so I guess we’re going forward as best as we can and until such time as the land is cleaned up and turned over, I think it will be difficult to enforce the people that go out there on that area. Thank you.
The park is a long way from actually coming under the territorial jurisdiction. I think there’s a 10-step process before we can actually see something. I think we’re on step three on having jurisdiction over the park. I appreciate having the signs up there; however, some people can’t read signs and so they just drive right past the signs and they continue to tear up the area with their ATVs. It’s a real shame that something like this continues and I’m asking if this department can look at some interim protection to restrict the use of the ATVs. The road is good. If they can stay sensibly on the road, but it’s when they go off the road into the mountains and trails that causes a lot of damage. That’s what I was asking. I know it’s difficult. I was hoping that the Minister can be a little more persuasive or forceful to the powers that be and even looking at our own park and see what we can do to put some interim protection in the meantime, because we’re not doing any good at all. Our government, the federal government, they’re not doing anything to restrict the ATVs from being in that area. Where’s the government, the Conservative government, the government in power right now to help us? It doesn’t leave me much faith in our government to protect our land, especially when an ATV is used in this area here.
This is the home of my grandparents, my grandmother. I was hoping that we could have some interim protection with the transportation or something that would stop the ATV users from coming into this area here. Common sense if they stay on the road, it’s okay, but they’re not using common sense. They’re going off the trail and you can see it just like scratch marks on a...(inaudible)... It’s not good there, so I’m hoping that we can do something more than just putting some signs up. I mean, it’s good. We put pressure on the land rovers and I was very happy that they wrote back saying that they’re not going to come and we’ve seen the damage on the trail. We’ve seen the way they went through swamps and Beaver Lake areas. So I think that’s what we’re asking.
Like I said, in the Sahtu we only have one park. This one here is being proposed a world-class park and it’s just a real shame when we fly over the trail and when you get closer to the trail and where you can actually see the ATV tire tracks. It’s a crying shame that this is happening. Why can’t the ATV owners stay on the road or leave it and walk the trail? I don’t understand. That’s a little bit of my frustration, is as to seeing if we can put some interim protection there. This won’t make too many ATV owners happy because they certainly go up there to hunt and they use that area. I wonder what else we can do to protect our area and protect the Do et’q CANOL Trail proposed territorial park. I’m going to make a plea to the Minister again. Thank you.
The land owners, Indian and Northern Affairs, have undertaken a scoping session or scoping work to determine the nature of the cleanup and how much it would cost to clean it up. They are moving towards cleaning up the area. The communications we’ve had with them they’ve said they’re prepared to turn over the land for the park tomorrow if we’re prepared to accept it as is and pay for the cleanup. Obviously that’s not in our best interest to do so. They’re not prepared to enforce it, we don’t have a petty trespass act to have the authority to keep anybody off federal lands, so other than to post signs and intervene with the four-wheeler clubs that operate, I think that’s about as far as we can go.
I know that at mile 222 ENR has a checkpoint during the hunting season. They could probably give out some information to the four-wheelers if they go through there, but we don’t have people there during the summer months when they usually go out. It’s a difficult situation. I’m not sure what the answer is but we can continue to bring it to the attention of Indian Affairs and the Sahtu landowners that own the first 10 kilometres of the road that’s up there.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Krutko.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just following up on Mr. Yakeleya’s discussions, I know in the Yukon there are corridors along the highway. There are certain times of the year you can’t even put a snowmobile on the tundra unless you have six inches of snow, to enforce that regulation. I find it interesting that we can’t do it here but they have regulations in the Yukon which are pretty forceful with regard to four-wheelers and snowmobiles, that you have to have a certain amount of snow before you can actually drive off a highway and whatnot. Maybe that’s something that can be looked at with regard to how they’re able to accomplish that in the Yukon. We can’t do it here and where the damage seems to be is just across the border on our side of the border versus the Yukon side. Maybe we could work in conjunction with our Yukon colleagues to see how exactly they’re able to do that over there.
I have to agree with the Minister that we definitely need a petty trespassing legislation of some sort so that we are able to make people accountable when they damage property and the land. Because we live in a sensitive environment, we have to ensure that we don’t allow people to just roam wherever, destroying the permafrost and whatnot and not be accountable for it. Maybe I’d suggest that we do look at what they’ve done in the Yukon, because I know the Dempster Highway corridor has been there for some time and they do have some pretty tough regulations on what you can and cannot do in that corridor. Maybe that’s something the Minister of Environment and his colleagues in the Yukon can maybe give us some suggestions on how they were able to do it there so we can look at doing something similar on the CANOL Trail.
Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I believe I know how they did it. They own highways and they also have devolution. That’s how they were able to do it. We’ll be prepared to talk with the Yukon because we interact with them all the time.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Anything further, Mr. Krutko? Page 12-25, Industry, Tourism and Investment, activity summary, tourism and parks, operations expenditure summary, $11.295 million.
Agreed.
Page 12-26, Industry, Tourism and Investment, activity summary, tourism and parks, grants and contributions, contributions. Mr. Krutko.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With regard to the Sport Hunt Outfitter Marketing Support Program, we had an interesting meeting a while back with EDI. We met with a bunch of different outfitters and the department and it seemed like some people were for it and some people said they can’t access the program. I’m just wondering how many people did access the program and have it worked out the situation where people who were present said they were having challenges accessing the program because either their business model didn’t fit with regard to either converting to a different type of activity, like a fishing lodge versus a hunting lodge. Again, I’d like to know what type of uptake did we have and what have we done with the people who seemed to have some issues with this funding.
Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There’s two parts to this funding. It’s $300,000 for polar bear and $300,000 for caribou. They have to be resident of the Northwest Territories to be able to access the funding. Also, I guess you can’t be red-flagged by this government. So if you owe the government money, then we can’t discharge the funding. It has to meet some basic criteria to access the funding. The last time I checked there was maybe four out of seven caribou outfitters that accessed the funding for caribou.
Again, it was the caribou outfitters that seemed to have an issue. I haven’t heard anything regarding the polar bear outfitters. It seemed like it was the caribou outfitters that had some difficulties with some of this funding. It did come down to more of accessing the funding, application based, their application didn’t meet the criteria. I just wanted to throw that out there with regard to the issues that have come before ourselves as committee. That’s good with me.
Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Page 12-26, Industry, Tourism and Investment, activity summary, tourism and parks, grants and contributions, contributions, $4.036 million.
Agreed.
Page 12-27, Industry, Tourism and Investment, activity summary, information item, tourism and parks, active positions. Mr. Krutko.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again I’d like to ask for a breakdown with regard to the affirmative action candidates, management positions, and disability and women in the different positions.
Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We’ll present the statistics on a departmental basis.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Krutko, is that good? Mr. Krutko.
Yes, I just note that, I don’t know why it’s not on here, but you do have an operation in Dawson City, Yukon, in this classification?
I believe there are two seasonal workers who work there.
I just wanted to know when the job is opening up in case I might have to apply for it.
---Laughter
