Bill Braden

Thank you. What does the Minister mean by market participation, Madam Chair?

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Health and Social Services.

Please provide a detailed accounting of the number of nursing graduates in 2006-2007 at Aurora College.

How many job offers were made to these graduates?

What is the number of placements that resulted?

Mr. Speaker, I want to note that the names of the graduates are not requested in the interest of privacy and personal information. I'm only seeking the numbers and results. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, other information I have does indeed indicate that there have been delays in maintenance on the boat and getting it ready to launch. In fact, that has been a factor in the delay in getting the Merv Hardie ferry in the water. Can the Minister confirm that there have been maintenance issues that have delayed the launch of the ferry service this spring, Mr. Speaker?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions this morning are for Mr. Menicoche, the Minister of Transportation, about the urgent fuel situation at the Yellowknife Airport. Mr. Speaker, I have been advised by some of our airline carriers, one which supplies fixed wing scheduled charter service, that his company is now on rationing. He has been reduced from normal fuel consumption of about 24,000 litres a day to 7,600. He has been cut back by two-thirds. One helicopter company is rationed to only 400 litres of fuel a day. Mr. Speaker, I am advised that one of the two fuel suppliers at the...

Mr. Speaker, I guess I’m a bit disappointed to hear that the GNWT has not got a more firm or more aggressive position on this at this point. The DIAND Minister, Jim Prentice, clearly has the mandate to make this happen. In light of the, as I indicated in my statement, absence so far of any substantive legacy project from the already massive development that is underway in the NWT, will the Minister seriously consider the advantages that legacy projects such as hydro, roads and communication projects will have and press that case for federal government investment, Mr. Speaker?

Mr. Speaker, my questions this morning are for Mr. Bell, the Minister responsible for Industry, Tourism and Investment, and it concerns the suggestion floated a few days ago by Tristone Capital that the Mackenzie Valley pipeline won’t cut it on commercial terms unless the federal government jumps in with a suggested $2 billion worth of support. Mr. Speaker, my first question is does the GNWT agree with the suggestion that the federal government must put taxpayers' money into the Mackenzie gas project to make it viable? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The financial and community, territorial and federal governments, and certainly the developers of the Mackenzie Valley gas pipeline project, are, I think, still trying to get used to the stunning news of a couple of months ago about the revision, cost and the timing of the pipeline. The cost is more than doubled to something like $16 billion Canadian with a completion date for the project now in 2014. One global energy advisor, a company called Tristone Capital, in a report just last week, said that the very high-risk project, in order to earn the high returns that...

Madam Chair, I certainly understand that we run a number of complex projects and some of them can’t be guaranteed or predicted with absolute certainty that they can be done, so it’s fully understandable that there can and will be some carry-overs. But I guess an aspect that I wanted to ask about is that, you know, as the implementation of some of these goes ahead and indeed, you know, the Minister or the department finds that, for instance, there is very limited uptake on a call for bidders or the cost of something comes in extraordinarily high, well above anticipated costs, do we have a way...

Thank you, Madam Chair. The bill is quite large, as supps go in this Assembly, and it may be a little, deceiving is the wrong word, of course, but in its inclusion is a very large number of carry-overs, both in cash value and in quantity, from the previous year, Madam Chair. Some $75 million of this is, in effect, for projects that this Assembly has already approved from the previous year or, potentially, even years. These projects are, of course, uncompleted and what the Assembly is doing here is simply reaffirming the money that was unspent from last year can continue to be spent this year...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister is quite correct; the service will hopefully be restored much earlier than usual. But the reality is, it's too late for the fuel suppliers here in the Yellowknife region. Mr. Speaker, the Minister has acknowledged there are indeed maintenance issues, and it's starting to think the Merv Hardie has been out of the water for more than four months now, but here we are at the cusp of the season and we're still fixing it. Mr. Speaker, what is the nature of the mechanical and maintenance issues with the Merv Hardie and how long is it going to take them to...