Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today in my Member’s statement I talked about tourism and, more specifically, tourism in Edmonton about attracting Edmontonians and perhaps even Calgarians to the Northwest Territories. Mr. Speaker, my questions would be the for the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment and what I’d like to ask today is: is Edmonton, Calgary, or even just the Alberta market a tourism target market for the Northwest Territories? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Minister responsible for Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. Bob McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Edmonton is a significant market for the Northwest Territories. We think there are a lot of advantages to working with Edmonton and Alberta. Our primary contact with regards to marketing is NWT Tourism and seeing as Edmonton is only less than two hours and probably about a $300 to $400 ticket away, and since we’re interested in increasing business and personal travel to the Northwest Territories, it’s a natural fit. Similar to what we’ve done with Vancouver and B.C. where we have our aurora visitors go through there and have direct flights, we’re looking for international connections; we’re hoping that we can work through Edmonton to establish a European connection. The mayor, when he was up here, as the Member knows, was very interested in our Come Make Your Mark program and was asking a lot of questions about that. Certainly, Edmonton for many years has built itself as the Gateway to the North. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you. The Minister highlighted some things about the Edmonton mayor and what he had heard, and I should also take this opportunity to point out that the team from ITI did a bang-up job about informing the mayor about opportunities in the North and that should be said certainly and clearly on the record that they did a great job. I think they did such a good job, the mayor was sparked with many other ideas about what could be done for our territorial market. He came here with an open hand saying how could he help, and again, tourism was a particular area he kept highlighting, saying more could be done.
Mr. Speaker, I guess my question for the Minister of ITI is: has ITI ever looked at discussing a particular issue with NWT Tourism about opening up a tourism bureau or some type of office, a permanent presence in Edmonton to help build on that gateway concept, I guess, here to the North? Thank you.
Thank you. Because we’re so close to Edmonton, we feel that we have our tourism bureau right here in Yellowknife operating out of Edmonton. But to be more specific, we do work very closely with the Edmonton market through NWT Tourism, and NWT Tourism has developed some very specific promotions with Edmonton as well as some generic promotions.
The specific promotions are we’ll be participating in the Edmonton RV Show this year as well as the Edmonton Boat and Sportsman Show. As part of that, we will be operating a fly-fishing pond and a movie screen, so that means we’ll have preferential promotional materials and operators that want to rent the booth will have discount prices. We’ll also feature some of our celebrity TV stars from Ice Pilots NWT, who will be there promoting the show and promoting the North.
Those are all fantastic things and I wouldn’t want to detract from them. I guess I would follow up in the same type of manner as my earlier question, which is: has the Minister or the NWT Tourism ever considered establishing a permanent presence in Edmonton? That said, that presence could work with the City of Edmonton’s economic development, because again the mayor of Edmonton seemed quite keen on wanting to partner in a way that could benefit the whole North.
I’ve sent an e-mail to the mayor and asked his Edmonton Bureau of Tourism to be in contact with NWT Tourism. Anybody that we can get to work with us and promote the North we’re very interested in and we’re very eager to follow up on that with the mayor.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to thank the Minister for that answer. Just to build on it slightly a little further, the Minister talked about the presence that the NWT and the other two territories had in Canada Northern House where they worked collaboratively and successfully, if I may add, in sort of a pan-territorial perspective. I’ve mentioned about a pan-territorial tourism commission many times and how to build upon sort of the North as a giant vision from a tourism point of view. My question for the Minister is that we have $3.5 million put into this potential marketing campaign. How does the Minister see us helping develop with our two territorial partners, again working in conjunction with the City of Edmonton, about launching the North not just to the world but on what I would call our direct target market of Alberta and their million population in Edmonton?
We have a pan-northern tourism marketing approach with the other two territories. We’re targeting not only Edmonton but four other major Canadian cities so that we can get southern tourists to come and visit the North. We’ll be launching a promotional campaign both on TV and the print media. You may have seen some of the ads that have already been placed in southern papers. I should add, on top of that we are developing package tours that will emanate from Edmonton so that we will get visitors to come to Yellowknife and the Northwest Territories.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.
