Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to follow up on the Minister’s statement this morning or earlier today on the traditional economy, the Minister of ITI. I want to start by agreeing with him that the traditional economy is indeed a critical part of our total economy. I support the Minister’s statement on this. I am wondering how much we are doing in the way of measuring this. If we really value it, we should be measuring it. Are we measuring the importance of berries, mushrooms, garden produce, fish and trade of the same between families? I am thinking not on those things that are actually sold and bought but the sort of under the table, not under the table but the domestic economy, if you will. Are we measuring those parameters? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. Bob McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is correct; we have been basically making some broad estimations and I think that this is an area that as we put more resources and more funding into developing local economies and with regards to food and country food, we are going to paying much more attention to statistics now. For example, we have been estimating the value of country food at about $30 million for the Northwest Territories. For the compensation process, we allow the harvesters to factor in the value of harvesting as part of the calculation of the YMIR. This is an area that, as we go forward, we intend to improve our recordkeeping and statistics. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I very much appreciate those comments from the Minister. In fact, the domestic economy is recognized generally as being even larger than the market economy and yet we still don’t have these important statistics on it, so I really appreciate that intent. I look forward to working with the Minister on that.
Will the Minister agree that if we are going to know or talking about here and balance off the various options that we have in development and market economy, will we be measuring the value of child care and home care, the value of education and services provided in the domestic economy so that when we lose those, we know what we are trading off? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, perhaps I can speak to the Member to get more information about the detail. In the past we have had difficulty in getting this type of information because a lot of the people that would provide it were questioning what that information was going to be used for. There are some concerns whether it could be used against them and so forth. I think it is a matter of figuring out what information we need and how we go about collecting it. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, again, I appreciate the Minister’s comments. I realize this is not commonly done so there is not a lot of good methodology out there, so we have some work to do. Beyond measuring it, I think monitoring could be important. What was the economic impact of the caribou population crash, for example, to our domestic economy? What was the importance of rising mercury in the fish as a result of climate change or large dams, more industrial activity? Do we have the potential to measure those impacts? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, in certain areas we do have the potential and information. For example, we have a fairly good idea of the collapse of the caribou populations, how it affected the barren-ground outfitters, for example, and how it affected Yellowknife, because we collected that information on an annual basis, and in fact the outfitters used to generate that information themselves because it was important for them to have the general public understand how much value the outfitters provided to the Northwest Territories.
With regard to how it affected individuals, generally we have to rely on individuals to provide us with the information, because we used to try to collect how much a harvester, how many caribou they would harvest or how much fish and so on, and that information is harder to get and we would collect that information, or we try to collect it on a five-year basis. Generally, again, that’s something that we need to improve our recordkeeping on. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Short supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thanks for those comments. I want to just be clear that we’re distinguishing between the market economy impacts and the domestic economy is what I’m talking about here. So nobody has ever come to me from ITI and said you’ve lived on caribou for 25 years and never bought red meat, what’s the impact of this caribou crash? Those are the sorts of things. So will the Minister commit to bring something forward to committee to begin the discussion on this and move towards that? Mahsi.
Thank you, and it’s our intention to do so. We’re starting in a number of regions where we’ll be piloting programs and we will definitely be going to the committee for feedback and information. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Krutko.
