Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I rise on one of my favourite topics, Great Slave Lake fish. Over the last four years, I’ve made many Member’s statements on Great Slave Lake fish. We know it’s a great product. We know there are a lot of hardworking people out there. It’s a great industry, it’s a renewable industry, and it’s one that we haven’t seen the full capacity of. We know we’re not even over half our quota that we can catch on a productive renewable basis.
We’ve made some progress. We now have a business plan in place for those fishermen through ITI. We know that we’ve gotten some capital money to do a fish plant. We know this spring the Department of ITI insisted on giving a subsidy, and the fishermen have responded over the summer. Over the summer we’re seeing anywhere from a 30 percent to 40 percent increase in production. We’re seeing just about a million pounds in production if those numbers work out correctly.
I also forgot to mention the fact that we have a new logo, we have a new marketing plan, and we’re going forward. We’re pushing this project forward. The fishermen need dredging, as well, but that project is not moving forward anytime soon, but the rest of the project is moving forward.
Some of the questions I’m going to have today are for the Minister of ITI. Where we have, again, a roadblock, the federal government, the Conservative federal government right now, and hopefully, we’ll see what all our candidates have to say about this over the next little while where we’re going to go with the Hay River fish plant. We have $1.5 million allocated. We’re looking for federal assistance to help us complete the project. We need assistance. This is a great renewable resource. We need to capitalize on it.
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. The Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
