Debates of August 23, 2011 (day 16)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment and are in follow up to my Member’s statement earlier today.

On March 23rd I attended a meeting between industry and government on the NWT film industry, and at that time the GNWT, or the department committed to a number of items with respect to the film industry. One of them was to encourage greater cooperation between ITI and ECE, one was to dedicate some seed funding for film and media arts, one was to invest in a website, one was to invest in the formation of an association for the industry, and one was to establish a mandate for the NWT Film Commission. I’m happy to say that most of this has been done by the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment and I’m very happy with the progress.

I do have a couple of questions. I know that a website has been developed. I have had an opportunity to go on line and see it. It’s really quite good and it is early days. My question is, at the beginning stage of this website development, I’ve gone in to look at it and in one section it’s called Suppliers Guide and it basically outlines all the different organizations that are available to help the filming industry. Animal handlers, carpenters, caretakers, directors, equipment rental, these types of things. I’ve gone through and opened each one of them up to see what’s on there. Right now, unfortunately, it appears that all of the people identified within these lists are from Yellowknife, which is great, but a film industry for the Northwest Territories is supposed to be NWT-wide. I’m curious; is the department committed to going out to the other communities and regions of the Northwest Territories to gain some professionals that are providing these types of services and get them included in this territorial website?

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Minister responsible for Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. Bob McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We are talking about an NWT film industry, so it’s our intention to go across the Territories and we’ll probably do it on a regional basis and update our website as we go along.

I was hoping that would be the answer and I encourage the Minister to have his staff at the Film Commission start to go out and research the other communities. I do know that there are a lot of filmmakers in the other communities, people who can do duplication and things like that.

The other area -- and this is an area that came up an awful lot during the consultation -- was the relationship between ITI and ECE and how these two departments really need to work together in order to really enhance the film industry in the Northwest Territories. They do have similar mandates, but they do have different mandates. I’m wondering what the department is doing to encourage their relationship with Education, Culture and Employment with respect to the NWT film industry and arts in general.

We do work very closely with the Department of Education. As a matter of fact, our offices are right next door to each other so we interact on a regular basis. We work together very closely on a number of these strategies. We developed the NWT Arts Strategy and we all participated at NWT House. We’ve been working on a cured show, and it is our intention to work very closely on promoting and developing the NWT film industry. We will be meeting as we go forward and work together to promote this.

One of the items that was discussed at that March 23rd meeting was the possible need, or need, in fact, of an industry association. At that time there was a lot of talk about the department working with some key individuals in the film industry that exist today about trying to find a way to create an industry association in the Northwest Territories. I was wondering if the Minister could tell me if there’s been any progress on that front.

I would say that without the involvement of the different filmmakers we would never have gotten this far. They have been working with us every step of the way. Now that we’ve identified funding, they’ve been working with us to develop the criteria. Certainly I would want to continue to work with them and I would certainly like to see such an organization be developed, so we’ll work on that area.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to thank the Minister. Clearly it’s the commitment of the film industry, representative of the film industry and the departments of both ITI and ECE that have led to the success in this area. One of the areas that they talked about or the Minister has touched on is the funding that is now available to the film industry through SEED. It’s $100,000, which is, clearly, great. I’m wondering what kind of mechanism they have to assess the value of those dollars that we’re spending, how we’re going to track those dollars to make sure that they are in fact bringing back benefit. Is there any plan in the future, if we can prove clear benefit to increase that money so that we can get greater benefits?

I believe, personally, that $100,000 spent by the GNWT in the film industry will allow us to help the industry circulate hundreds and hundreds of thousands if not possibly millions. So I’d like to see in the future that increase, but before we do that, I’d like to know if there’s a mechanism to assess the effectiveness of that spending.

In the past when we looked at developing the NWT film industry, we had concerns that we wanted to make sure that the Northwest Territories benefitted. Through the work of the consultant, we were able to identify that NWT filmmakers were causing the Northwest Territories to benefit to the order of magnitude of $9 million, and that was without the government investing any money.

We do have the approach to collecting this information. We’ll continue to do it. We will collect it on a regular basis. It’s our intention to continue to invest, and invest more money as we go along and as our government financial picture continues to improve.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Tu Nedhe, Mr. Beaulieu.