Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to thank the Minister of Tourism for his Minister’s statement today. I had a couple of questions regarding his particular statement.
In his statement, he talked about 23,000 camping nights that were recorded over the territorial parks this particular year and he had also highlighted it was a slight decrease from the year before at 23,500. I guess my question really comes down to trying to get a sense of utilization of our particular parks.
Does the Minister provide a breakout as to where some of these people are coming from? I’m trying to get a context of our locals using our parks more than tourists from out of the territory. What type of percentage and analysis does the department provide?
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thank the Member for the question. The predominant visitation would be in the North Slave region, of course, with Yellowknife. We do have a breakdown of where the numbers come from and I would be more than happy to provide the Member and his committee with those visitor statistics related to campground usage across the territory.
I want to thank the Minister for that particular answer. Just continuing along that same theme specific to, obviously, parks: What type of capacity does the department see in our particular parks? He did say that those numbers were predominantly reflective of the North Slave, but does the Minister’s office or the department, that is, track the actual usage and capacity of those particular parks? In other words: How many nights were 100 percent full? How many nights were 20 percent full? How many nights did we have to turn other people away to say go find another park? I know that there’s Reid Lake Park, those types of solutions. Do they do that type of breakdown? Because I want to get a sense, as we go forward, are we using our parks to the fullest capacity or do we need to expand them?
I can certainly get that level of detail for the Member. It exists. We can certainly track that and look forward to providing that information to the Member. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, what type of budget do we provide our tourism folks that specifically target the rubber tire traffic and tourism market? As we try to invest in particular parks around our surrounding communities across the territory, we must have a particular budget that we say, come to Inuvik and use that park, come to Hay River and use that park. What type of budget do we spend, and that is reflected to the return on investment with the numbers and links to my very first question, where are people coming from? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, we do have that information. Again, that is very detailed information. We have the Northwest Territories Tourism that provides the marketing for the Northwest Territories. We also have staff here in Yellowknife and in the regions to get to the dollars that are spent specifically on promoting rubber tire traffic to the campgrounds to the Northwest Territories. Again, that is a number that I will get to the Member and break it down by region for the Member as well. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thank the Minister for those several commitments that are through those questions.
The last particular question is quite a simple one. What type of planning is the Department of ITI doing in the sense of expanding the Fred Henne Park area? I say that in conjunction with the Department on Transportation. As we all know, it is putting a road through the realignment of Highway No. 4, there becomes a great opportunity to expand the usage of Fred Henne. Does the Minister have any future commitments that are going to build on the growth of Fred Henne by way of a capital investment? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the Member for that. It is a good question. We do need to find more capital dollars for campgrounds or park systems across the Northwest Territories. The number we have in this year’s capital plan is very meager. We certainly need to find more.
There has been a great deal of talk – they are going back a number of years, even since I was with the department a number of years ago – about an RV park here in Yellowknife. That is something we have to continue to pursue. Also, there are opportunities at Fred Henne to expand campgrounds there and sites there at that park. There have been master plans developed in the past. I think it is maybe an opportune time to revisit some of these old plans that were in place that would see the expansion of that campground, and that is something under my watch as Minister of ITI that I would certainly like to see happen. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
