Standing Committee on Finance meeting this week 

Dear Members,

Late on Friday I received an invitation to do a short presentation to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance this week. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this committee, it is a federal committee and their mandate is to study and report on all matters relating to the mandate, management and operation of selected federal departments and agencies, including the Department of Finance and the Canada Revenue Agency, and to conduct pre-budget consultations. Basically, this meeting is to gather intelligence across all industries ahead of the Federal budget, and meetings are being held with a variety of industries across the country.

Our presentation to the committee is fixed at five minutes, so what we say will be at a very high level. We want to share with you the things we are planning to focus on in our five minutes, and our ask is that if there is anything you see that we have missed or that needs to be mentioned, please get in touch by end of day tomorrow.

Here are the speaking points we plan to address in our five minutes with the committee:

• Federal economic supports that are in place must continue for as long as it takes for travel to fully resume
• We are asking that the federal government devise a scenario-based plan for reopening. The reopening plan needs to be science-based and data driven, and it would be great if the plan included proof of vaccine along with rapid testing and contact tracing. The plan must give some lead time for tourism industry businesses to prepare for reopening, which will include things such as hiring staff and re-establishing partnerships with airlines and other partners.
• We will ask for tax incentives for the 2021/22 fiscal year to support local travel within Canada.
• We would like to note to the committee that Covid-19 has created a false economy. With the rollout of vaccines, jobs of contact tracers, border security officers, isolation centers hosted by hotels and other jobs created by the response to the pandemic will disappear. The need to get the tourism sector up and running as these jobs disappear is critical. 
• We will be asking for the continuation of airline supports on the local front, and support for national airlines so that routes can be resumed. 

We are happy to have this opportunity to advocate for the tourism industry of the NWT at this level. 

I do apologize for the limited notice, and If you see anything critical that is missing from this list, please feel free to contact me by 4:30 pm tomorrow, March 30 which gives us time to prepare the required document for the committee for Wednesday. 

Donna Lee Demarcke
Chief Executive Officer
NWT Tourism
executive@spectacularnwt.com 
867-873-5007 Ext: 1005