Delivered on January 23, 2018

Good evening and welcome to NWT night.

Before things get started tonight, I would like to take a moment to simply thank each of you for coming – and for your continued interest and investment in the Northwest Territories.  

This event has become a bit of a tradition.  A chance to celebrate all things mining in the Northwest Territories – and to catch up with those of you who are colleagues partners and most importantly, friends. 

At this time I would to welcome and thank the Indigenous governments who have made the trip to Roundup this year.  The Government of the Northwest Territories is proud to work in partnership with Indigenous governments – who are major land and resource owners in their own right – to ensure that responsible development benefits all residents of the territory.

I would also like to recognize members of the Legislative Assembly Standing Committee on Economic Development and Environment who have joined us this year. As a consensus government, decisions aren’t made by Cabinet or Ministers alone. Regular MLAs have an important part to play and we appreciate the support and work the Standing Committee and its members do to help us create and sustain a strong, diversified economy across the territory.

And finally I would like to acknowledge my Cabinet colleagues who are in attendance here in Vancouver this week.  For the second year, we have decided to come to Round Up to show our unified support for mining and the contributions it has made to the Northwest Territories.

A strong NWT mining sector will support not only jobs and business opportunities, but the health, social and economic development programming that is delivered by our government.

We have a lot of potential in the Northwest Territories, but we know that we have to work to make the most of it. We cannot take the resource development sector – or our economy – for granted.

We need to plan to grow the economy and we need to work together to turn opportunity in our territory into long-lasting benefits for all our regions and people.

Round Up is a great place to connect and strengthen the partnerships we need to grow the industry in the Northwest Territories. I want to thank you all for coming tonight and look forward to speaking with as many of you as I can.

I would now like to welcome the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment Wally Schumann to say a few words.