Thank you, Mr. Speaker. From time to time Members on this side of the House don’t feel that we’ve been necessarily heard or listened to by Cabinet. Fortunately, this isn’t always the case. Last year I asked the Minister responsible for ITI some questions and I made a statement on convention support. Today I’m happy to thank the Minister for listening to what I had to say.
During that Member’s statement and those questions, I asked the Minister to provide some awareness or create a greater awareness of convention capacity in the Northwest Territories, but also to provide some financial support.
I’m happy to say that the Minister has come out with, or has facilitated, the creation of a meeting and conference planner for 2011. It’s quite a good document. I’ve gone through it and I’ve read it page by page. I do feel the department has given a bit of a conservative estimate of the conference size capacity that can be facilitated in each community. Hopefully in future editions we’ll expand that a little bit.
I’m also happy to see that we have made specific reference to the capacity in Yellowknife, Inuvik, Hay River, Fort Simpson and Norman Wells, so we’re not focusing just on Yellowknife. I do feel that in future editions we can probably expand that to include some conferences in lodges and some of the other smaller communities in the Northwest Territories.
Over the last couple of years we’ve lost over $20 million in business travel and meetings in the Northwest Territories. There is still significant opportunity to expand on this. In my statement last year, in addition to asking to create some awareness of conference capacity, I asked the Minister to provide some moderate financial rewards to NWT-based associations when they convince their national or international counterparts to come to the NWT for their annual conferences or AGMs. This is still a great opportunity for both local associations and the NWT. With an incentive like this in place, I believe that many local associations would be happy and willing to begin campaigning their national and international bodies to come to the Northwest Territories for their annual meetings and conferences.
Later this afternoon I will be asking the Minister responsible for ITI some questions on this topic and seeking his commitment on this next step, which is to provide some financial incentive.
Once again, I would like to thank the Minister for putting together this conference planner. It’s great that we’re actually being heard from time to time.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.
