Bob McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the comments. We put a very concerted effort into reducing our backlog and focusing on our workload and moving to a client service department. We require all of our employees to take client service training. I think we’re starting to see the benefits of that.

Planning long term, we know that 40 percent of our workforce will retire within the next five years so it’s something that we have to plan for.

Aboriginal governments drawing down their authorities, we are very cognizant of that and we have been looking at that, their requirements for successor rights...

As the Member knows, the land claims agreements reference surface rights board and when discussions on access and benefits agreements were being discussed, everybody rushed to look at the land claims agreements to see what tools were there to deal with it. Obviously we don’t have a surface rights board, we don’t have surface rights legislation. The land claims only envision arbitration if there are differences of opinion. The federal government, if they were to develop surface rights legislation, it would probably take them a couple of years at least. My understanding is that the federal...

Earlier this summer, or I should say the summer of 2010, we had the opportunity to meet with Minister Baird who was the Minister of Transportation at the time and the lead Minister on infrastructure. We met with him to follow up on a letter we had written to him requesting funding for under the Green Infrastructure Funding. We had requested funding for the Fort Providence transmission line and also for Lutselk’e in the amount of $6 million. He committed that he would take the proposal and review it very seriously, and we followed up a few times but we still haven’t received a definitive answer...

I’m not trying to be humorous. The money goes to local wildlife committees and it’s there to help hunters and trappers and local wildlife committees decide what form the assistance would take. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

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...

Mr. Speaker, I recall that, in previous life, when I was involved with the Fur Institute of Canada, there had been a harvesting program or high school programs that were developed so that they could be incorporated into schools and I will follow up on that and follow up with the Minister to see if we could continue that work. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We undertake a review of our program and the Member would be pleased to know that some of the communities, when the children or the youth go out on the land, one of the teachers actually goes out with them. For example, in Colville Lake where the teacher went out with the youth and spent two or three weeks out there, so I’m sure the educator learned a lot as well. Also, in the past when we’ve done these reviews, we saw fit to expand our program, so that in 2009-10 we also added Take a Kid Harvesting Program. We find that it has been successful. As we review it, we will endeavour to make it...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m very pleased to recognize in the gallery today Ms. Jenni Bruce, the chair of NWT Tourism; Mr. Larry Jacquard, board member of NWT Tourism; Mr. Gerry LaPrieur, executive director of NWT Tourism; and Mr. Doug Doan, assistant deputy minister of ITI and also a member of the Tourism Marketing Advisory Committee.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to table the following two documents entitled Tourism 2015: New Directions for a Spectacular Future, February 2011, and Northwest Territories Marketing Plan 2011-2012.

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.