Robert Hawkins

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I see we have lease commitments for infrastructure for the visitors centre in Inuvik as well as Dawson. I’m just wondering, does ITI provide any sort of contributions to the visitors centre in the Northern Frontier Visitors Centre that’s located here in Yellowknife that serves the whole North Slave. Thank you.

That’s good.

Is the program open to agriculture products?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s not my intention to break the promise of the Finance Minister when he says he’s holding the line on taxes, so he should be assured that I’m not trying to trip him up on that promise to the people of the NWT. Mr. Speaker, would the Minister of Finance be willing to come to a meeting, if I was able to arrange it, with the Hotel Association and even some municipality officials on this particular issue about creating the hotel tax initiative? That money could be targeted at the tourism industry, an industry that could use more money to help bring new dollars into our...

The Hotel Association as well as a number of people in the tourism organizations out there all would like a hotel tax. I think they’ve been advocating for this particular type of tax for some time now. This is not a new initiative that’s been suggested. The Minister talked about downloading it maybe to further governance but I don’t think that’s the ideal approach. What conditions would the Minister of Finance need to be in place or to see supported in order to make it a territorial hotel tax?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In the NWT’s limited economy, tourism is one of the best opportunities to bring in new money to our North. One way being proposed to build upon that is being put forward by the Hotel Association. They support the creation of a territorial 1 percent hotel tax. Now, at first glance, that may seem counter-intuitive, Mr. Speaker, especially coming from business where they are saying we need a new tax, but that 1 percent hotel tax would add up on average as $1.50 per room each day, Mr. Speaker.

What they believe strongly in is this money would be new money generated to be...

Thank you. The Minister highlighted some things about the Edmonton mayor and what he had heard, and I should also take this opportunity to point out that the team from ITI did a bang-up job about informing the mayor about opportunities in the North and that should be said certainly and clearly on the record that they did a great job. I think they did such a good job, the mayor was sparked with many other ideas about what could be done for our territorial market. He came here with an open hand saying how could he help, and again, tourism was a particular area he kept highlighting, saying more...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to thank the Minister of Tourism, Bob McLeod, for his opening remarks today because it works well with my Member’s statement.

As the Minister has said, on April 1, 2011, the GNWT and NWT Tourism are set to launch their Tourism 2015: A New Direction for a Spectacular Future. Tourism 2015 builds on the Tourism 2010 Plan, as said earlier, and certainly makes an effort to continue the great opportunities that are available in our tourism market.

When the mayor of Edmonton was in Yellowknife a few weeks back, he asked why the GNWT doesn’t focus tourism campaigns...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As a Yellowknife MLA, in my experience I don’t tend to have a ton of transportation issues in particular. But first I’ll say that what dealings I have had with the department have been very good and I find them generally quite easy to deal with. So that being certainly the primary experience I’ve gone through over the years, I too would like to highlight the Deh Cho Bridge as a significant issue that still continues to be a matter of concern in the riding and I look forward to any further update we have, both on the quality of the project and, of course, how the...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It’s nice to be able to provide a couple of comments regarding the Minister’s opening remarks, and quite namely, a few things inside his opening remarks did cause some interest and I would like to hear perhaps a little more detail.

In one of the paragraphs, the Minister mentioned about the transboundary water agreement with neighbouring jurisdictions. One of the challenges is we have become keenly aware, of course, as being downriver, we see the effects of the other jurisdictions. Although it has been some time since I sat on the committee that would oversee this...