Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment. We have an amazing group of people in Hay River who are highly interested in agriculture. I know the Minister has received a briefing from a very enthusiastic young lady, who has a market garden in Hay River, by the name of Jackie Milne who is now the president of the NWT Farmers Association. Ms. Milne has come up with an outline for training so that she can share her knowledge with others and encourage more interest in the idea of growing our own food, which we know is very, very possible here in the North.
The Northern Farm Training Institute is about to get underway. The Minister has heard the presentations. I’d like to ask the Minister what support ITI is offering for this new initiative to share this information with the surrounding communities and Hay River.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. David Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m going to have to be very nice on my answers to the Member here today, considering she’s going to be grading us tomorrow. We have met with Ms. Milne when she was here in Yellowknife and my understanding is she is coming back to Yellowknife, I believe, on March 5th. Our department, and hopefully myself, will be able to meet with her again. We are anxious to see her progress with her initiative and help out in any way that we can.
As I have mentioned a number of times in the House, we are moving forward with negotiating the Growing Forward 2 Agreement with the federal government, which will provide us $6 million over five years, and we’re hoping to access some of that funding to help with this initiative. Those discussions are underway.
I do thank the Minister for his interest in this topic. Everything can’t be about the non-renewable resource sector. We have to put some of our attention to renewable resources and small-scale operations.
I’d like to ask the Minister, within his department, what kind of human resources and resources are dedicated to this issue of agriculture.
Over the past four or five years, we’ve had many more staff working on agricultural initiatives. They’re balancing their workload with other things as well. I would be guessing, but I would say five staff in the area that would deal with this type of work on a day-to-day basis.
I think that it’s safe to say that agriculture is catching on across the Northwest Territories. We’ve always had the greenhouse in Inuvik. We hear wonderful stories coming out of Norman Wells. I think the real impetus and the real push for agriculture in the Northwest Territories, I have to give credit to the folks from Hay River who have kept this little struggling organization of the TFA alive, and have actually put their actions where their words are and have started market gardens and all kinds of different endeavours in that area.
I’d like to ask the Minister, does he not think that it would make sense to put the positions that are dedicated to agriculture in a place like Hay River.
As I mentioned, we have staff. They are multi-tasking on a number of economic initiatives here in the Northwest Territories. Certainly as things progress, and if we do have dedicated staff that are working in the area of agriculture on a day-to-day basis, it would certainly make sense for them to be located in Hay River.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Final supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m not intimately familiar with people in ITI and what they do, but I believe there is one long-term public servant in Yellowknife with ITI that has been focused on agriculture. Certainly, we also have another long-term staff position in Hay River, which we do appreciate.
When you’re talking about decentralization around the table with respect to agriculture, has there been any consideration to supporting agriculture in Hay River by looking at decentralizing that one full-time position that we know about in Yellowknife?
We haven’t done that analysis on those positions, but it’s certainly, as I mentioned earlier, as we move forward we get the deal done with the federal government on Growing Forward 2 and we put more of an emphasis on agriculture, and we’re getting closer to the devolution deal being done, once that’s complete and we take over responsibility of land management here in the Northwest Territories, positions like that may certainly make a lot of sense for us to have. As to a location, I think I said it earlier that Hay River would certainly make a good case for those positions.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
