Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, earlier, I spoke about the tourist boom in Tuktoyaktuk, and my questions are for the Minister of ITI. Mr. Speaker, to make sure that the community of Tuktoyaktuk can continue to provide essential services that are required for the 2019 tourist season, my question is: will the GNWT commit to an RV park or visitors' centre or other infrastructure that is crucially needed? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This is an interesting situation. As we all know in this House, for many of us that follow this file very closely, with the construction of the Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk Highway, it's brought an enormous amount of people up to the Member's riding. I think the big challenge around the community has been, and I have been up there quite a bit and talked to residents in that area, the amount of influx of people was overwhelming for the community for the most part. We had over 5,000 people, I believe, that came there this summer.
We have had a number of meetings with the community leading up to this for a number of years. We have assisted them with development plans on how they want to address some of these things. You know, we have committed to doing certain things with them. We are trying to do a way-side pull-out right now along the ITH. It's one of the funding things that we are looking at, and we are working with hunters and trappers on that to try to resolve which place they actually wanted. There were three places put forward, and I think we have it narrowed down to two of them.
We committed another amount of funding, somewhere around $42,000, to complete a feasibility study to advance a cultural centre, but I think what we need to do with the community going forward is we need to get back in there and have a conversation of what happened this year with the amount of people that were there, what kind of needs that need to be put into place. A lot of this stuff needs to be entrepreneur-driven. The Government of Northwest Territories cannot do everything for everyone. There's a lot of opportunity around tourism and things going forward. I have had a number of discussions with people around the RV park for Tuktoyaktuk. I have had people come to me and say they wanted to do it, and then they come back and say they didn't want to do it. Then someone else has come to me, and they want to do it. The hamlet was into these discussions, and then they have called off those discussions.
As of late, I have sat down with the mayor, when I had an opportunity on a trip to Inuvik, and had those discussions. We will certainly continue to have those discussions on what we need to address. It's a different situation because most communities are struggling. How are we going to be able to change our economy? We are in a situation in Tuktoyaktuk that there's almost an overwhelming opportunity.
Mr. Speaker, I believe that, you know, having an RV park or some sort of infrastructure like that should fall on the departments of the GNWT and ITI and maybe other departments within the government. I think it's only fair, given that Tuktoyaktuk used a lot of their capacity to do what they can to ensure that they did their best, Mr. Speaker. I don't know if I got a solid answer there.
Mr. Speaker, my second question is: will the GNWT fund a full-time tourism coordinator so that additional capacity can be provided?
These positions, we have rolled out. We had three of them rolled out. We had one in Tuktoyaktuk, one in Hay River, one in Deline.
I think the challenge with what the Member is asking us for a full-time coordinator was these were going to be rolled around the Northwest Territories as the demand increased in other communities. This is an ongoing funding, I think, for a little bit, but we're going to sit down and look at which next three communities wanted to apply for this.
I know we're going to sit down with the community here shortly as I have said and all the stakeholders and see what is happening in this past year and what type of assistance is going to be needed, so I can't commit to, if we're going to continue this ongoing funding, but there is ongoing funding for different communities, and, maybe after the discussion we have with the community, maybe I'll have to make a decision that, you know, that Tuktoyaktuk has the biggest need going across the board, that we're going to have to continue to look at their assistance, but I'll have to get more assistance once we have the stakeholder meeting.
It's good to see that the department is going in that direction, where they are consulting with communities and their needs.
Mr. Speaker, the community of Tuktoyaktuk is also dealing with the issue of a funded GNWT economic development officer, the EDO. This position was set up through the Hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk and there are some uncertainties as we speak. Mr. Speaker, the contract is on a year-by-year basis. Mr. Speaker, my question to the Minister is: can this position come directly through the Government of Northwest Territories like other surrounding communities rather than through the Hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk?
My understanding on some of these positions like this in some of the smaller communities is we were having a hard time to fill some of these positions, but one of the conditions we took with the Hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk was, and we give them a significant amount of money to do this on a year-to-year basis, which is ongoing by the way, they have the flexibility to hire the individual they want.
We have had cases where I have had people of some communities come to me and they don't like our EDOs and another community that are assisting them. This gives the community the flexibility to hire the exact person that they want. Chances are, in this case right now, the person lives within the community and is part of the community and has done a great amount of work on this file for the residents of Tuktoyaktuk and in the Northwest Territories.
We have no plans of bringing this to the Government of Northwest Territories. We want to give the communities the flexibility to continue to hire the person they want, to suit their needs.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Nunakput.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It's good to hear that there are no plans, but, as well, I think, if they do not plan on taking it on, they should fund the position appropriately like other positions that are in economic development or in the Government of Northwest Territories.
Mr. Speaker, what will the Department of ITI do in the upcoming months to advance the tourism development plan for the community of Tuktoyaktuk with the hamlet?
As I have said, in the coming weeks here, we are going to sit down with all the stakeholders in the community to find out what needs to be addressed in the coming months ahead for the next tourist season. During those discussions, the Hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk is going to have to come up with their own tourist development plan. They have to lead it. They are going to have to own it. They are going to have to need it and put it in place. We are there to assist them to do that, but we are also currently in conversation with CanNor to help develop another tourist development workshop in the coming months.
There are a number of things going on, as I have said. It's a good position to be in, but it's also a challenging one, I think, for some of the community members to take the advantage of these real opportunities that lay there. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Frame Lake.
