Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to ask some questions of the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment. I just want to commend him on the statement that he made earlier today in the House in the statement regarding CanNor and the investment that the two governments have made into tourism in the amount of $10 million.
So the first question I’d like to ask the Minister is: How are these dollars being divvied up across the Northwest Territories and how are they being used? How are the regions benefiting from the money that’s being announced today?
Earlier in the year, Inuvik held a very successful welcome back, the Sunrise Festival. We had about 25 people from the south come up to Inuvik and participate in the coming back of the sun. It’s a festival and a celebration that I think all people of the North and Canada can partake in. Are any of these dollars able to go into the region, specifically the Inuvik Sunrise Festival?
Thank you, Mr. Moses. Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The funding that was announced, we do have a regional focus on that. I mentioned five communities that will be receiving funding. In the Beaufort-Delta, Tuktoyaktuk will be receiving $250,000. We are hopeful to, at some point in time, have a campground outside of Tuktoyaktuk when the road is complete. We have supported the Sunrise Festival in Inuvik. I know the department’s been supportive of the festival in the past, last year to the tune of $10,000. NWT Tourism also contributed $20,000 to the Sunrise Festival in Inuvik just recently. We have been supporting the festival in Inuvik.
With the decrease of activity in the oil and gas sector within the Beaufort-Delta region, I think we’ve got to put our focus in another investment and industry such as tourism. I’m glad to see the Minister is taking that on and making headway in that sense.
I’d like to ask the Minister, I know that the dollars he says, but the cost of living, the cost of travel in the Beaufort-Delta region, we see it. We see it in our books here when Members have to go back up to the Beaufort-Delta. It’s expensive just for a trip from Yellowknife. Ten thousand to the Sunrise Festival might be great. It’s a one-day, one-event kind of event and they make it a big deal to make a weekend out of it. I think that we can get more people up into Inuvik in the Beaufort-Delta region if there is a little bit more of an investment, a little bit more work with the Town of Inuvik and with the other partners. The Town of Inuvik did a great job in developing partners with some of the airlines, but I think this government needs to step up if we’re going to diversify our economy into the regions.
That’s a lot of money, this $10 million, and I want to know if they’ll be a bigger investment up in the Beaufort-Delta region, up in the Sahtu and the Deh Cho, because those are the areas that aren’t seeing the economies really grow.
We’ve made a substantial investment in communities like Deline. Lutselk'e will be receiving $500,000 toward tourism initiatives there. We are making an effort to try to get the funding that we have across the territory. In the region, I know our regional tourism office, in collaboration with municipal and community partners, is involved in lots of initiatives to help grow tourism visitation and spending in the Beaufort-Delta region. In particular, some of the initiatives, if I could highlight some of them for the Members, are: revamping and enhancing Destination Inuvik promotional materials to better target potential visitors to the Beaufort-Delta region. The regional tourism officer for the Beaufort-Delta region is engaging with communities in the region like Tsiigehtchic, Fort McPherson, Tuktoyaktuk, Aklavik and Ulukhaktok to develop sustainable tourism. We’ve got programs that have been delivered or plan to be delivered in the region including Welcome NWT customer service workshops, starting a tourism business, a workshop in the Western Arctic, visioning tourism in Aklavik, a community open house, visioning tourism in Tuktoyaktuk, community tourism engagement in Tsiigehtchic, and we’re also planning community engagements in Ulukhaktok and Fort McPherson in the very near future, and more workshops and capacity building initiatives are planned for ’15-16 all across the Beaufort-Delta region.
I was able to attend one of those community engagement sessions where a lot of really good points and recommendations were made. This was a while back. I just want to know, moving forward with these community engagement strategies, I don’t know what the cost of that is. You know, get a bunch of business owners, community members in one room to talk about events. I’m not sure what the cost of that is, but what is the action taken out of these community engagements, and I guess, the five communities that we’re going to be funding this year, did they have a community engagement workshop in place and a plan in place before we funded them?
The communities that have been selected, the ideas came from the community themselves. The initiative came from the community. I can’t say 100 percent whether all of them had that type of community engagement before they were selected. I can get that information for the Member. But communities that have been identified for funding under the Community Tourism Partnership with CanNor will get funding through a contribution agreement with Industry, Tourism and Investment. We’re hopeful that we’ll see some success here and, I think, drawing on the success that a community like Deline has had will be an inspiration for other communities across the Northwest Territories from the community level and the grassroots level in the community, develop ideas, develop thoughts about what product will look like in the community.
The Northwest Territories is also leading the way in this country when it comes to Aboriginal tourism and growing that type of product, the experiential travel that a lot of people are looking for nowadays. Deline has done that and we’re hopeful that other communities follow Deline’s lead.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Over the years we’ve seen this economy grow and develop the tourism industry and it’s great to see. I’d just like to ask the Minister on maybe not his trips, but the trips to Asia, Europe and North America, how are the rest of the regions promoted rather than just the northern lights? How are communities promoted? Because our communities are pretty unique. They all have something to offer, something different for every different type of person we have out there. So, how are our communities and our regions promoted when we take our trips over to Asia, Europe and North America?
We have promotional videos, we showcase some of the spectacular scenery of the Northwest Territories, the wild spaces, the clean air, and certainly when we’re promoting the Northwest Territories it isn’t just one segment of the tourism industry, it’s everything we have to offer.
It’s important to note that in Asia, specifically China, tourists from China really do like clean air, open space and the scenery. I think we’ve only scratched the surface of the potential in the Chinese market to get many more Chinese visitors here to the Northwest Territories and they won’t, hopefully, just be coming to Yellowknife. We’ll get them outside of Yellowknife into the regions as well.
That’s why it’s so important that we continue to invest in our communities and we give them the capacity building effort that they can take part in, in our tourism sector. We really do believe that tourism has the potential to really have a strong economic benefit for all 33 communities across the NWT.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
