Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions are to the Minister of ITI. Just to listen to him, he’s a big fan of strategies and visions. I want to ask the Minister here in terms of getting -- I’m going to back to it -- wildlife food into our government facilities or into stores. Right now we have a fish market here. We have good fish in the Great Slave Lake and Bear Lake. How can the Minister, through his department, assist the fishery industry to put fish into our government institutions such as the hospital where they can have traditional foods in that facility?
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Minister responsible for Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. Bob McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This is an area that we’ve worked very hard on over the years and there has been quite a number of initiatives that we’ve attempted. We had a red meat initiative, for example, We’ve had test fishing at the community level, and going back to residential school days, I don’t know if the Member wants to go back to where everybody ate fish three times a day, but we can work at the community level, because we all recognize how that was done, is it was purchased by local harvesters, and I think that we are prepared to do that. We put money in the proposed budget to allow us to improve in those different areas. Also, we talked quite a lot about producing locally. The only area that we have to be clear on is when you start serving or making food available to the public, you have to make sure that it meets all of the healthy tests or health standards, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.
I certainly don’t want to go back in time. The residential school days, according to my uncle, they served rotten fish there, so I’d like to just leave it at that there.
I want to ask the Minister of ITI, in terms of even just for the one issue on fish here, in terms of working with the Minister of Health and Social Services at the Stanton Territorial Hospital serving fish for elders who are in the hospital, who want fish broth, who want some boiled fish for their recovery. The Minister is responsible for traditional economy and, you know, they have wonderful fish in Great Slave Lake and Great Bear Lake. Is it possible, through the strategy, that he can work with this Cabinet to see how they can get fish served at the territorial hospital, in his capacity as the Minister of ITI?
As soon as this budget is approved, we have identified funds to allow us to do that to develop local markets for fish, and I think one of the best places to start would be to work with my colleagues that have institutional facilities and get them to start purchasing fish and other commercial country food that is available and start serving it. Thank you.
I’m getting hungry now here. I want to ask the Minister in terms of his development, his process in terms of developing local markets for, say for example, fish, in terms of once the budget now is going to be, hopefully, finalized within the next six days here, in terms of going forward, is the Minister then prepared to put a discussion paper before the appropriate community in terms of getting their input, in terms of having this initiative see the light of day in terms of when we can get something on the go here.
We always work very closely with committee on these kinds of things, so we will put together some ideas and principles to work with committee as to how we could best develop this and utilize minimal resources to develop a very important local fishery or production of local foods. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I take it that the Minister will look at a territorial-wide initiative in terms of just the one issue of fish, in terms of how we can get this into the government facilities.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That’s our intention, recognizing that not all of the communities have quotas. You need to have quotas, for example, for commercial fisheries, and a lot of times, working with the federal Department of Fisheries, we can get them to set a quota as to what your quota is what you catch kind of approach. So that’s one area that we can work closely together on. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.
