Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m going to follow up on my Member’s statement earlier on the Mackenzie Valley Fibre Optic Link as well as the Inuvik Satellite Facility. I have questions for the Minister of Finance.
It’s been in the newspaper and on NWT Days we had a delegation going over to China and Japan. We had a delegation go to Sweden as well as Germany, I think last year.
I just want to know what kind of talks and, I guess, commitments are we getting from other countries to look at putting up antennas or satellites at the Inuvik Satellite Facility. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. The Minister of Finance, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This whole initiative has been one of acceleration that the federal government and other countries were very interested when we started talking about this project in the last government and they were giving us a lot of verbal support. As we move forward through the last government, late in the last government, but this government where we worked with the Assembly and we ramped up our interest and we’ve moved this project from the political debate to the approval of the money and project design to, as the Member said, the actual start-up of the installation and the fibre optic line, there’s been an increasing amount of business. Literally, countries are beating a path to the door of Inuvik because they know that we are committed. The money has been voted, the project is being built, it’s being built by a high quality firm with Ledcor and NorthwesTel and it’s going to give the very benefits the Member is talking about.
So we have the Swedes; we have the Germans; we have interest from the Norwegians; we’re talking to the Japanese; we’re looking and talking to the Italians; we’re looking at going back this June to go do another quick tour to make sure that we can really market this now that we have a product that is going to be on the ground in the second part of 2016. Sweden Space Agency just came out, in fact, when we’re heading to Ottawa, with a very positive press release saying they’re doubling their investment in Inuvik because of the fact that they are now very satisfied that this project is going to happen and it’s going to have enormous benefit to Inuvik, all the way down the valley, but Inuvik is the anchor tenant and it’s going to change the face of Inuvik. For this $80 million, we’re going to be transforming the economy in Inuvik away from total reliance on resource development to this type of information technology that has an enormous long-term benefit and life. Thank you.
Thank you. In the budget address the Minister announced the establishment of the Western Arctic Centre for Geomatics in Inuvik. Aside from that, I want to ask the Minister, has he been talking with the Aurora Research Institute or Aurora College in looking at developing some kind of training program so that as the Fibre Optic Link becomes in place whether or not that type of training is available for people in the Northwest Territories? This is a new, different type of industry and gives our residents a chance to become educated in something else. Has he been having those talks? Thank you.
Yes, there are discussions underway. The reason the Western Arctic Geomatics Centre is going to Inuvik is because of the fibre optic line and the work and opportunity that’s going to be created by having them located there. The college has been in meetings, there’s a working group forum. The Germans, among others, have offered up 20 percent of their volume for data processing in Inuvik. So, there are training opportunities, there’s going to be other opportunities related to service development, value added secondary industry opportunities. When you look at what happened in Kiruna, Sweden, $100 million to $150 million and 400 jobs, approximately, added to the community over the years, an advanced physics university in Kiruna, and the college is ideally situated to take advantage of that and we are hard at work to make sure that we get all the training opportunities that we can. It’s going to really give young folks some opportunities in other areas where they can use other skills, their math, their sciences and all those other skills. We’re going to work with the countries that are coming in, the college, the government to make sure that we are as ready as possible and there’s an enormous future here. Thank you.
Thank you. There are a lot of benefits once this fibre optic link gets connected down the valley here.
I want to ask the Minister, talking with his Cabinet counterparts in terms of such benefits as telehealth, e-learning, has he been doing some type of inventory to make sure that we have those type of resources in the community so that we can increase the telehealth, the e-learning and with other departments as well? Thank you.
Thank you. The communities coming down the valley are all going to have a direct fibre link or a microwave link and just about every community that I can think of has the capacity to do telehealth and the schools are all hooked up. What they don’t have is the bandwidth to be able to do it properly. So now we’re going to marry up the fact that we have the infrastructure with the capacity to, in fact, allow them to use telehealth to its full capacity, that students can log on to their computers and do work and not wait half an hour to get on. What’s going to be important in terms of opportunities for the communities coming down the valley is that final mile piece, the connection from the fibre link into the communities. It’s going to be an opportunity for businesses or communities, community development corporations to look at wiring their community to put the businesses all on the link to allow them to benefit, as well as the phones, cable, all that kind of thing.
Even Tuk, once the road is built we’re going to go back up and we’re going to put that fibre link into Tuk and it’s going to have all the same connectivity that Inuvik does, or Yellowknife. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Moses.
Maybe some short responses.
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Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We do have a delegation that’s travelled around the world looking at investments. Would the Minister be looking at possibly creating or hosting some type of conference in Inuvik so we could get a delegation from all over the world and it would boost the economy in the North and boost the economy in the Beaufort-Delta to see the potential of the Fibre Optic Link and potential of the satellite facility? Would the Minister look at hosting a conference of some type? Thank you.
Thank you. The role of a Minister is very difficult, that fine line between fulsome responses and being accused of not answering the question, so we try to err on the side of answering the question so that we can remove that complaint.
In regard to the Member’s specific question, the community of Inuvik has indicated to us in writing that they would like to see a very major gathering of this type that the Member talks about in Inuvik. Instead of the oil and gas show, they would like to convert it, not this coming year but next year, into a gathering that’s going to bring together all the folks.
About a year or so ago we invited all the university presidents, for example, up to Yellowknife to have a discussion about the possibilities of how we do business with our research agenda, traditional knowledge, the remote sensing that’s going to happen. Now that we’ll have the satellite station up and running, it enables a whole different kind of conversation and we’re going to be working with the Town of Inuvik to have that very meeting. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.
