Is it ongoing or just one time here? Thank you.
It’s appropriated for this year. There are plans to appropriate it for next year and then, going forward from there, we will have to see how successful that effort has been. Thank you.
Thank you. Continuing on with my questions on this page regarding the sport hunt outfitter marketing support, the $300,000, this is a repeat from last year. Given what I know about in the industry, we know that the sport hunting outfitters are literally on life support. This $300,000, albeit it’s nice to see that we are able to help them diversify, clearly I don’t believe it will help them stay afloat much longer. What are the long-term plans that we can do for the sport hunting outfitters? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Mr. Vician.
Mr. Chair, the Sport Hunt Operator Marketing Fund that was established was targeting two particular areas of outfitting. One is the polar bear hunt that was impacted by restrictions by the U.S. import ban on polar bear and the other one, of course, was with regard to supporting our outfitters that relied on the tourism operations related to the barren ground caribou program. We continue and propose to continue to support, for the coming year, the operators in both those areas, Inuvik region and North Slave region, predominantly this is where they exist, and provide them with funding to continue to assist them in the care and maintenance of operations to the limits that we can. Some of the wind down efforts that they are doing and some of the transition work that some of them are pursuing make a degree of flexibility in the program funds that will continue. Candidly, all of these markets are in a downturn as a result of the restrictions that are currently in place. Therefore, they are subject to further review. Through the Minister, we will continue to do that review with our partner, Department of Environment and Natural Resources, and report to committee in the future. These funds are by no means being recommended for appropriation indeterminately. It is intended to be an appropriation for this coming year to help, again, those operators as best we can through this transition. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Vician. Noting the time, I will rise to report progress. Sergeant-at Arms, please escort the witnesses out. Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Thank you, witnesses.
Good evening, colleagues. Before I call for the report of the Committee of the Whole, I wish to note that I have been informed that your wish is to stay late today beyond the daily hour of adjournment. By the authority given to me as Speaker, by Motion 10-17(5), I hereby order you back into Committee of the Whole and authorize you to sit beyond the daily hour of adjournment to consider business before the House and to report as the committee deems appropriate. I would like to ask Mr. Bouchard to take the chair.
I will call the committee to order. We will commence committee once we take a short break.
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Thank you, I’ll call committee back to order. Mr. Ramsay, do you have witnesses to enter into the Chamber?
I do, Mr. Chairman, thank you.
Thank you. Sergeant-at-Arms, escort the witnesses in. Thank you.
Minister Ramsay, I’ll get you to introduce your witnesses one more time for the record, please.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To my left is Peter Vician, the deputy minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment. To my right is Ms. Nancy Magrum, director of shared services, finance and administration. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister Ramsay. Continuing on 12-26, activity summary, tourism and parks, grants and contributions, $5.558 million. I have Mr. Bromley followed by Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Really, I just wanted to say I’m happy to see the continuation and, in some cases, expansions in some of the support here, specifically that Tourism Diversification Program. I think we’re having some successes in that area and I’d welcome any evaluation that the department has done on the support provided to date.
I think the sport hunt outfitter and marketing support, I’m assuming this is support to help keep some of the outfitters alive over time, a rough period in our history here and I appreciate the continuation of that.
Finally, the little bump-up there, recognition of the additional costs and success of the Northern Frontier Visitors Centre. I know that’s a modest amount but, again, a great appreciation for that. So I just wanted to mention that. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We appreciate the Member’s comments. As far as evaluations go on the Tourism Diversification Program, we can try to get him some evaluation on the success of that funding and I appreciate his comments on the Sport Hunt Outfitter Marketing Support Program that we have. As well, the extra funds for the Northern Frontier Visitors Centre. I know they do a great job here in the capital, supporting the tourism industry. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister Ramsay. Next I have on my list Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just have a question with regards to the two contributions at the top of this page, tourism industry contribution and Tourism 2015. They sound remarkably similar. I just wonder if I can get an explanation of the difference between the two. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Deputy Minister Vician.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. The two contributions relate to contributions by the government to Northwest Territories Tourism for the purpose of marketing. The fund that’s indicated at $3.336 million is ongoing funding that pertains to ongoing operations and marketing by NWTT.
Tourism 2015 for $400,000 reflects a five-year commitment the government made under Tourism 2015 that is to sunset in the 2015-16 fiscal year and is directed to specific initiatives over that period and looked at on an annual basis. Subject to ongoing support, this fund would be considered for ongoing support in future years, but it is considered a separate initiative. So, thank you.
Thanks to the deputy minister for that. I guess in my effort to make the budget as easy to understand as possible, I’m not sure why we would need two items here. I appreciate that this is a five-year limited time contribution, but I don’t quite understand why we couldn’t add it into the first one – t’s still a contribution to NWT Tourism – and then just reduce the amount if it’s not renewed after the five years, but I’ll leave it at that. Thank you, just a comment.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. I will go back to Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. One thing I meant to get to was on the sport hunt outfitter marketing support. I, and I know other Members, have met with the outfitters in this area and they’re basically edging on bankruptcy because of the loss of caribou. There was some hope that the herd would recover in time to rescue these businesses, and some of them have basically put their lifetime’s worth of savings and investments into the business. It’s now looking like this is not feasible within the timescale that would allow them to recover anything.
Would the Minister be willing to work with these few outfitters, or perhaps he already is, on basically a rescue cleanup operation to maybe work with the charter outfits or whatever to try and bring back whatever is recoverable and allow them to minimize their losses. There’s no question that their losses will be significant regardless of what’s done here, but the government, to some degree, led these businesses and encouraged them to make this charge. They made it and then we left them with a mismanaged resource that’s led to their decline. Recognizing now that the time frame that we’re dealing with is, being realistic, these are not recoverable. Can we help them sort of cap things over the next year and allow them to get on with their lives with as minimum loss as possible?
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Ramsay.
We have, through the Sport Hunt Outfitter Marketing support program, helped those outfitters that have needed some assistance along the way protect the assets that they have out there. We haven’t had any discussion with the group about reclamation or bringing anything back that’s recoverable. That discussion hasn’t taken place.
I appreciate that, and that’s exactly what we had our meetings with the outfitters about, and they were asking if we could ask this question, so I’m asking the Minister, would he be willing to have those discussions? The Minister raises a good point that the reclamation is part of this. There are some environmental liabilities out there and so on, and perhaps there’s another department that’s taking on significant work here, but I think we are talking about helping these businesses which, again, we encouraged, minimize their losses and minimize the impact on the environment and so on.
I understand ENR has had some contact and is working toward that. From our perspective at ITI, we will continue to work with Minister Miltenberger and his staff at ENR to move that along.
Thanks to the Minister for his response to that. Would he commit to keeping committee apprised on this?
Yes, and that would probably end up coming through ENR. I don’t want to speak for ENR, but maybe we’ll just say yes. The Minister is nodding his head yes, so yes.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Page 12-26, tourism and parks, grants and contributions, $5.558 million. Mr. Yakeleya.
Mr. Chair, a couple quick questions to the Minister. I’m certainly pleased to see the community tourism infrastructure in the budget of $100,000, given the need for infrastructure in our communities to attract tourism into our communities. It’s not quite the same as some of the larger centres. I want to ask the Minister, if this $100,000, is this start-up funding and just ongoing funding, is it one time?
There are a lot of communities that are not on the highway system and to put more infrastructure in our small communities to attract a segment of the tourism group would considerably make it so dynamic that people want to come our region and our communities, and some of our communities do not have some of the facilities that are in some of the larger centres to make it more appreciated by the tourists to come into our communities. I appreciate this and this money is being spent in various organizations. Is this money here enough to start building infrastructure with all our communities? Because we all have a unique piece of attraction to our communities that we want to build up, and sometimes we just don’t have the dollars that we want.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Through our work on the Economic Opportunities Strategy it was clearly identified that we always get requests for smaller capital items in the smaller communities, and our belief is that tourism does have a great deal of potential in a number of our smaller communities. This money was identified through our work on the EOS. It’s appropriated this year. We’re planning on appropriating the same amount next year and then evaluating the success of the dollars that we put forward in this area. We’re thinking that having this money available is going to fill that gap, because we do get a number of requests on an annual basis of this nature, so we’ll see how this goes as we move along.
I certainly look forward to a breakdown as to where these infrastructure dollars are going to, which communities, regions, and how they are being taken advantage of by attracting tourism into their communities or region.
The tourism skill development contribution for mentorship and skill development, in this area too is a concern of mine that is this money being targeted for certain operators saying in here that are knowing that they’re doing well, or is this for new operators. Just basically maybe some briefing notes. You don’t have to explain everything to me, but I just want to know how we’re spending this money, and certainly anything to do with skill development is valuable and it’s worthwhile.
You know that we are getting a lot of Asian visitors now to the Northwest Territories. I guess that’s a question I always ask. What makes it so that they want to come to the Northwest Territories? We had some people who visited the Northwest Territories who said if it wasn’t for this program then I would never come here, because it costs quite a bit. But they had the opportunity to come here and they love it up here. What makes it so that, you know, are we geared to the high end of the class of people who can afford to come here? It costs quite a bit to come to the Northwest Territories even to fly in the Northwest Territories let alone accommodations that we have to offer at the price that we pay here. There is a group or segment of people that love to come to the North here and that is shown by the results that we saw from the stats that we’ve been reviewing here. I guess that’s not about the question as to the skill development and the skills that we now have in the North to attract these people.
One of the things that was also clearly identified through our work on EOS was the fact that we needed to put more of an effort into tourism training and initiatives regarding tourism training, specifically on the hospitality side. Most of us have travelled. I mean, you always remember the great service that you got wherever you’re at. That’s what we want to see more of our operators have, the availability of getting that type of training for their staff, and that’s our effort on this, and again, it comes from the EOS.
Just following up on the Member’s comments on what makes people choose to come to the Northwest Territories, I can speak from experience. I know the Premier and I and Member Hawkins in January we were in China, and I know the air quality, they’re under a yellow alert in Beijing today. The air quality when we were there was abysmal, and fresh air and clean air is something that a lot of people seek out. Certainly here in the Northwest Territories we are blessed with some clean air, pristine environment, wide open spaces, and more and more, people are looking for that type of environment to vacation in and to explore, and that’s what we have a lot of, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
I guess that’s one of the appeasing factors. We live in a clean, fresh North and we would like to keep it that way to attract the tourism.
In Asia, it would certainly be nice to take a trip over there some day; however, I will just have to wait.
Part of the tourism and promotion is to promote our lifestyle, that’s something appeasing, also, for our traditional arts and crafts – people are deadly artists and handcrafters in our small communities – that people want to see. Not made in China art, but made in the Sahtu, made in the Deh Cho, Beaufort-Delta, Tu Nedhe, whatever, made in Tlicho arts and crafts, the real stuff. I think that’s what I am looking forward to see, what type of support for promotion of our arts and crafts, to showcase our people.
It’s good to know that one of the attractions of the North is fresh, clean, pristine air and the beauty that we have to offer. I just want to close on that note of more of a comment to the Minister. I guess the question is promoting our northern arts and crafts, and you can see a little bit in the House by people wearing their traditional clothing. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman, we have come a long way when it comes to Aboriginal tourism here in the Northwest Territories. We have a strategy that we put together. I was at the FPT meeting where, you know, there is a lot of interest on Aboriginal tourism by the other jurisdictions across this country. They are interested in what we’re doing. In fact, we are leading the charge when it comes to Aboriginal tourism, putting together a strategy. We’re trying to increase awareness and support for Aboriginal tourism among Aboriginal communities here in the Northwest Territories and Aboriginal governments.
We are improving skills for Aboriginal businesses involved in the tourism industry here. We are leveraging youth and elder involvement in tourism across the Northwest Territories. We are supporting Aboriginal culture and language through tourism, and marketing and promoting Aboriginal tourism around Canada and North America and, in fact, the world. Arts and crafts certainly figure prominently into what folks could do when they come to the Northwest Territories to visit. We have some very beautiful and gorgeous arts and crafts made by some very talented artists and artisans around the Northwest Territories. We have a lot to be proud of and a lot to market. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Committee, page 12-26, activity summary, tourism and parks, grants and contributions, $5.558 million. Agreed?
Agreed.
Page 12-27, information item, tourism and parks, active positions. Any questions?
Agreed.
Agreed. Page 12-29, activity summary, economic diversification and business support, operations expenditure summary, $22.970 million. Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just want some clarification here regarding the NWT BDIC, not so much about the expenditures of monies but the fact remains this entity was established in 2005 and under Section 41 of the NWT Business Development and Investment Corporations Act it says it should have a mandatory review every five years, so if it was in effect since 2005, we should have had at least one review and should be almost slated for a second review.
Can the Minister indicate where we are at with that mandatory component of Section 41 of the act? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Minister Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As Minister, I have requested that report and hopefully BDIC and the department get that report as soon as possible.
So, just so we’re clear, we will have a report done in this fiscal year. Thank you.
Yes, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Minister Ramsay. Page 12-29, activity summary, economic diversification and business support, operations expenditure summary, $22.970 million. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think this is one of the most important divisions in the whole government. Our economy is important and to the extent that we are successful in this area of diversification, I think that we will be successful with our economic development. It will reflect our work in education and health and so on, but the work actually diversify our basis of economic realization is so important.
I want to recognize that additional contributions to the film industry here, which I recognize our ongoing support to fisheries and agriculture through the Growing Forward federal support that we are attracting here. I very much appreciate that.
Can I start with the Agriculture Policy, maybe? I know that this is a goal of the department, as reflected in their Economic Opportunities Strategy. What sort of time frame are we looking at here and is there an estimated budget for this? I would also like to specifically ask, would it include, for example, things that have come up through suggestions from the public like enabling regulations for small abattoirs for butchering of very small numbers of animals by local providers for local markets? That’s the sort of thing BC has done now, under 25 animals sort of thing. Our small providers could not meet the costs required for a typical abattoir on a large commercial basis, but we do have programs that we are supporting out there, teaching people how to do this on small scale. Would the Agriculture Policy also include the food security element, which is sort of a subset of the agriculture umbrella? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Ramsay.
