Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In response to Minister Ramsay’s statement today on morel mushrooms, I have a few questions. We have seen the morel mushroom pickers converge on Hay River. It’s an interesting group, the ones who are from outside of the Northwest Territories. You can recognize them readily. “Hi. You must be here to pick mushrooms.” That’s what I usually say to them. I can’t tell you why I recognize them, but anyway, they are coming in and the Minister has indicated that this is an industry that could result in millions of dollars for harvesters. They say the department has offered on-site workshops.
I guess I have some concerns. It sounds like even from the Minister’s statement it’s creating a little tourism because there’s no rain, so there are no mushrooms to pick. So we’ve got all these people hanging around. So, good on Kakisa for taking an opportunity to do a little cultural awareness. That’s really great.
But anybody coming into the Northwest Territories who wants to fish, harvest firewood, transport goods into our territory, be a vendor in our territory, or even wants to go on a trip on the land, they generally have to check in with somebody. So here’s my concern. You have a lot of people from down south. No doubt the Northerners may be aware of some of the dangers of being in the bush, but these people say they’ve got camps set up all over the place. I say, “Where’s your camp?” “Oh, it’s 150 miles down, you know, the Kakisa River, or wherever.” I’m concerned that, yes, this may generate a lot of money, but how much is it going to cost us when one campfire or one cigarette butt goes into our extremely dry forest and burns the Northwest Territories down? Thank you.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. With all the authorities in the Northwest Territories we continue to work with, of course, the RCMP, ENR monitoring these camps and where people are. There is no requirement for them to check in. Many of them are working for somebody else who would know where they’re at. The Member has a valid point and that’s something I’ll discuss with the department, and because we have had a lack of rain, although there is some rain in the forecast for next week, we’re hoping to get rain on Tuesday and possibly Thursday, which will help the harvest and help with potential forest fire danger here in the territory. We’ll get a more thorough response for the Member on monitoring the pickers who are here, where they’re at, and that is a very important issue. Thank you.
I would like to ask the Minister of ITI to share with the Assembly the risk-benefit analysis that the department has undertaken to determine how this territory would gain from allowing hundreds of non-resident harvesters to pick mushrooms on the land who will not pay income tax to the GNWT and, at the same time, will put the territory at great risk either for rescuing them or dealing with their emergencies or, as I said, starting fires that we know costs millions of dollars to suppress. What is the cost-benefit analysis of that being done? It’s a great idea. Come on up here and pick mushrooms, but it’s worrisome. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Not only are we seeing an influx of pickers from western Canada who are showing up in the Northwest Territories, but through the work of the department we are trying to get local people interested in this harvest. That’s why we’re putting on the workshops. That’s why we’re doing the walking tours. It is going to have an economic impact. The pickers who do show up here are going to eat at restaurants, they are going to stay in our parks and campgrounds, they are going to buy gas and supplies from local stores. There is going to be an economic benefit to having them here, but we are trying our best to ensure that the benefits of the morel harvest this summer accrue to people in the Northwest Territories, pickers here in the Northwest Territories.
We’ve had a great deal of interest. I mentioned in my Minister’s statement that 1,200 residents attended the workshops here in the NWT. Our belief here is there is going to be a very good harvest once the rain hits next week and we will see some economic benefit. We haven’t, to my knowledge, done a complete cost-benefit analysis on what it would be. We don’t really know, as I mentioned in my Minister’s statement, and there are a lot of variables. Things like weather, supply and demand, a number of variables there. We haven’t done that, but once this morel season is over, perhaps we could take a look and try to quantify what the economic uptake was on the harvest this summer. The most important thing is we are trying to get local people out to harvest the morels.
Last March we had second reading given to a proposed amendment to the Forest Management Act, which would allow the Minister of ENR to make regulations in respect to the harvest of timber forest products, which would include mushrooms. This is moving forward as well. We have to concentrate on the local economic uptake on this. That’s local people picking morel mushrooms. Thank you.
I agree with all that. Thank you to the department for all of the workshops and all the awareness they’ve brought to this potential remarkable industry for the Northwest Territories, renewable resource industry. But the fact is, we have many, many non-residents who have come to the Northwest Territories. It’s like a mushroom rush out there. There is no registry. There is no place to sign in. We don’t know their names. We don’t know where they’re from. We don’t know who their next of kin are. There are all kinds of dangers in the bush and that’s where these people are going to be operating and hanging out and camping.
You can’t come into the Northwest Territories and take one fish out of our rivers or lakes without a non-resident fishing licence. You can’t hunt, you can’t kill an animal, yet you can come in here and be part of what is being touted as come and make $500 or $1,000 a day.
Why can’t there be a registry of some kind set up at the border where they are all coming in on rubber tire traffic? Why can’t there be some kind of a registry that the RCMP could have access to, to see who these folks are? So we could contact families if they went missing, just like you do when you are going on a canoe trip somewhere. You register with somebody, at least. It would be really nice to know who they are and where they are.
I mentioned the regulatory change that’s going to be required. That is being conducted through the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. For us, if you are going to be conducting business in the Northwest Territories, we have a Business Licence Act here in the NWT. It’s administered through Municipal and Community Affairs. It requires businesses operating in the Northwest Territories to obtain a business licence, which may provide ENR the means to measure the extent of the industry at this time.
We also have a requirement that employers must be registered with the Workers’ Safety and Compensation Commission to conduct business where there are employees or employers. In the Northwest Territories, we also do not have trespass laws, which challenge the ability to restrain activities on private land. Again, there is going to be some regulatory changes coming. They won’t, however, impact the 2015 morel harvesting season. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.
