Alfred Moses

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. On June 24th to the 26th this past summer, I had the honour of sitting in a meeting with seniors from around the region that I attended and worked on a seniors meeting, entitled Working Together to Address Seniors Issues. It was a follow-up to a meeting that some of the stakeholders, some of the coordinators did when they came to Yellowknife and had a meeting with the NWT Seniors’ Society.

A lot of really good discussions happened during those three days, and we had seniors from Aklavik, Tsiigehtchic, Fort McPherson and Inuvik. They were bringing up issues that meant a...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have questions for the Minister of Transportation today. It’s regarding our airport road in Inuvik. Any Member that has driven that road or has done any visits to Inuvik over the summer – it’s not even recently but just throughout the summer – knows how bad a situation that road is in.

I’d like to ask the Minister, what is the plan for paving that road or fixing that road from our airport in Inuvik to the community of Inuvik? What is our short-term and long-term plan for that road?

Just to finish, we can’t forget about the other future benefits and investment potential that the Inuvik-Tuk Highway is going to produce when we look at our offshore drilling, tourism and reduced cost of living for the communities toward Tuktoyaktuk and Inuvik.

Not only that, from a personal level, when you walk around Inuvik and you see the young guys and the young girls working, the family providers, the men who go and work long hours to provide for their families in Tuk and Inuvik and how that benefits them, it’s great to see people who are finally working, a decreased number of people on...

One question the Minister made reference to is on the Yukon side. I know we’ve put a lot of resources into our highways and obviously referenced here in the infrastructure budget. I know the question came up earlier in this government, whether or not our Minister speaks directly with the Yukon government to see what kind of investments they’re doing to upkeep their side of the Dempster Highway. In the summertime it can get really bad in certain sections and then, as you mentioned, we do a good job to try and open up the highway in the wintertime. On the Yukon side, are they putting in as...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just following up specifically on Highway No. 8. It’s really interesting here about the half negotiated contract with that one, but just in terms of the amount of rainfall and the amount of work that’s gone into the work that was done on the highway, is there any extra dollars that would be going into the construction and the surfacing and resurfacing and continued maintenance on the highway, considering the amount of rainfall that we had and the damage that it’s done on the highways?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just further, in terms of the facility itself and the runway, has there been any discussion on lengthening that runway so that it can actually service bigger jets? I know Whitehorse has that opportunity to bring in international flights and with the Inuvik-Tuk Highway coming on board, are there any discussions on lengthening that runway at the Inuvik Airport?

Thank you for the update on that. Just in regards to the Capital Asset Retrofit Program, I think it’s a good program and just reading the substantiation sheet, I think it’s being well served and well used and we’re seeing some of the paybacks on that. But if you look at the shop replacements for both Inuvik and Fort Simpson and then you look at the one for Norman Wells, there’s included a wood pellet boiler in Norman Wells. Why wasn’t that also an option for Fort Simpson or Inuvik when building the new shops?

Just in terms of the background on this building and some of the high heating costs, the foundation problems, poorly insulated walls, why wouldn’t this be kind of fast-tracked, especially when it got approval from the Peer Review Committee on April 21, 2011? Why has it taken so long to start the construction and now we’ll have to wait until 2017-18? Because with the poor insulation, the high heating costs, those all equal to high utility costs. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to ask the Minister, what’s the timeline that we can see some construction and some work on the road so that residents, visitors and tourists can see that road being fixed? Is there a timeline that we can start seeing the work being started?

In anticipation of the Building Canada Plan Fund to look at putting money into this project, in the interim what is the government doing now to address this issue? It is quite drastic, and as I mentioned in Committee of the Whole yesterday, there have been incidents where there have been accidents.

I’d like to ask the Minister, in the interim what are we doing to address the severity of this road?