Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to follow up with my topic of my Member’s statement and that’s the facilities that are operated by the Government of the Northwest Territories that are visitor and resident related; they’re used by many NWT residents and visitors alike.
Mr. Speaker, for the benefit of people like Mr. McBryan, who would like to know why the gate is closed on the access to Alexandra and Louise Falls and the Escarpment Creek by Labour Day weekend when there are still many people visiting and coming into the North and people wanting to use these facilities, could I ask the Minister to please tell us why we do not have the resources or why we just cannot leave these facilities open to the public. Thank you.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Minister responsible for Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. Bob McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Our tourism facilities and our parks are wonderful assets of this government and it’s usually some of the first impressions that visitors to the Northwest Territories see. Unfortunately, two years ago the tourism budget was cut and so the improvements that we were going to do to our facilities had to be rescheduled and we had to make do with the limited budgets that we had. The budget that was cut was never replenished, so we have to operate within a limited amount of resources. For our tourism season, we operate within the limited resources that we have to operate under. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, as I said, we’ve had an unusually nice fall this fall, the nice warm weather. As a matter of fact, I think there isn’t any snow in Hay River today, and even going a little further south towards the border, I think it’s been 10 and 12 and even 15 degrees recently. Mr. Speaker, the reason that the Minister gives that the program for the facilities there cannot be expanded because of limited resources, what is it that does not allow or precludes the GNWT, ITI, from just leaving the gates to those facilities open so that people can enjoy them whether they are staffed or not? Thank you.
We have had a lot of discussion with our clientele, what visitors and campers and people who come to enjoy nature, what their expectations are when they come to utilize a tourism park or facility, and they want to make sure that we have clean facilities, that they have an ability to enjoy nature and the environment, and we cannot do that if we just leave the parks wide open and have no control and no monitoring. We’ve come to learn that we have to have some control in order to make sure that we maintain our facilities and that the people who use the parks can enjoy the facilities. Thank you.
I agree with Minister McLeod that when we do have people come there, we want everything to look good and we want things to be tidy and clean, we don’t want the places to be vandalized or look unkempt. Our territorial park facilities, which include the facilities around the falls and Escarpment Creek, are open from May long weekend to Labour Day weekend. How much would it cost this government to extend that into a shoulder season of, say, Easter weekend to Thanksgiving weekend? How much money are we talking about? Thank you.
I guess it would depend on whether we’re talking for all the parks in the Northwest Territories or are we just talking about the three that are between Enterprise and the border. If we are talking about the three, then it would be a matter of paying the wages of probably about three or four people and also some contractors. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Your final supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Not to be unkind where there are other parks, but we are the southern part of the Northwest Territories and obviously have, usually, the weather on our side for the greatest amount of time. I don’t need to compare it to the campground in Inuvik, for example. Geographically, we do have a few things going for us in the South Slave. One of them is a longer warm season for those parks, the three parks that Mr. McLeod refers to. I would ask the Minister if he would undertake to get a costing for us on what it would cost to expand that into the shoulder seasons a little bit so that people could enjoy those beautiful facilities that we are so blessed to have. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I would be pleased to do that, because one of the things in tourism and parks that we like to do is we like to see people using and enjoying our facilities. We will be pleased to come up with a number and maybe even amend our business plan, if that was at all possible. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Great Slave, Mr. Abernethy.
