SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Great Slave MLA Glen Abernethy wants to see the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment be more committed to the promotion of musicians in the North.

Abernethy said this current assembly has improved support for musicians, but said there isn’t any money to promote Northern musicians elsewhere in Canada, pointing to statements in the GNWT Arts Strategy.

"There is one brief mention of performing artists," he said last Wednesday of the strategy, which focuses largely on crafts.

"Northern musicians produce a product and are a commodity in and of themselves. ITI should pay greater attention to performing artists as part (of the) strategy."

ITI Minister Bob McLeod said his department works to promote Northern performing artists, but the amount of money put toward promoting musicians is limited.

"It’s a struggle every year to get funding to promote tourism," he said. "In the past we’ve tried a hotel tax to try to get more money for tourism, but certainly the more resources we have dedicated for tourism, the more we can do to promote tourism using Northern performers."

McLeod said he would work in partnership with Education, Culture and Employment to help further the promotion of Northern musicians and tourism in the North.

Expanded midwifery program needed

An expansion of the government’s midwifery program is needed to help provide relief to overworked midwives in the NWT, specifically Yellowknife, said Robert Hawkins last Wednesday.

The Yellowknife Centre MLA asked Sandy Lee, minister of Health and Social Services, what the GNWT is doing to improve the service in Yellowknife.

"The only way for us to expand programs such as that is to make some real bending-the-trend changes, that changes the trajectory of where we are going with the health and social system where we can focus on prevention, focus on community care, and midwifery fits into that," Lee said, pointing to a document titled the Foundation of Change, which she plans to table this week.

"I know that the program is really popular and we need to make some major investments to expand these programs."

Incentive would help bring conference centre

Riding on the coattails of the recent Circumpolar Health Conference, MLA Glen Abernethy said Thursday he wants to see the GNWT bring in an incentive program to promote Yellowknife as a place for a large conference.

"If successful, this incentive could demonstrate the demand for an official conference centre in the NWT," Abernethy said, adding he doesn’t think the government should pay for a conference center, but provide an opportunity to show its need.

There is money available – about $3.2 million – to promote diversity in the economy throughout the NWT and Abernethy said he believes "with some minor amendments to this program, we could easily utilize it to support a conference incentive to local Northern associations."

Bob McLeod, minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment, said the NWT Tourism Association will have a conference planner working for them in preparation for the Canadian Association of Society Executive Show in Toronto to help attract more conferences.