Thank you, Mr. Speaker. With rivers breaking up and lakes melting across the NWT comes a time that many people look forward to: the summer sport fishing season. Sport fishing has a great sustainable tourism potential for our communities that we perhaps do not make as much as we could. There should be business opportunities for local guides, hotels, bed and breakfasts, restaurants, stores, boat and equipment rentals, and arts and crafts. However, the large number of RVs and trucks gathered by the winter road crossing and campgrounds near Fort Providence especially can be overwhelming at times. Unfortunately, we do not always see these people coming into the community and spending their money locally.
At the same time we need to be careful that the fish stocks stay healthy and that we are not overfishing or damaging their environment. There are special restrictions in place for particularly sensitive areas. For example, the Providence Creek is closed to sport fishing from April 15th to May 30th and there are special limits on jackfish and pickerel for the Horn River and Mills Lake as well as the Mackenzie River Management Area which includes the Kakisa and Fort Providence regions to just west of Hay River. There are also special limits on grayling in that area.
The federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans is responsible for the regulations, and both the DFO officers and our local ENR officers enforce them. DFO does some monitoring of the fish in the area; however, overall there have been very few studies on fish, fish habitat and harvest numbers in the Northwest Territories.
Fish are a very important resource for all the Deh Cho communities as food, as part of our culture, and now economically as well. The communities know this best and I think we need to be looking at ways for them to get more directly involved in protecting the management of sport fishing in the area. We should not be relying entirely on the federal government to do this. The GNWT also needs to be working with the communities more closely to figure out how to benefit from the tourism traffic that is already on our doorsteps and how to ensure that it remains sustainable.
