David Ramsay

Mr. Speaker, the economic benefits will be great for all of the communities in the Beaufort-Delta for visiting family and connecting the communities of Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk. It will lower the cost of living in Tuktoyaktuk. We won’t have to build the ice road to Tuktoyaktuk in the winter months any longer. Long term, this road will have tremendous impact on the exploration and development of oil and gas in the region and lead to many more jobs and opportunities for residents in the Beaufort-Delta.

Also, I should mention tourism. Currently, in the summer months, when tourists drive the Dempster...

Mr. Speaker, I wasn’t aware of that. It is something that I certainly would look into. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, a big component of this is that industry capacity. We have been talking to the Territorial Farmers’ Association on a training component located in Hay River, where folks from the communities would go to Hay River, receive the training and be able to take the knowledge that they have learned in Hay River back to their home communities and train others when they get back home. That, I believe, is going to be a big component of the new funding. We are working out the details on the funding and how it flows and what it ends up going to.

Rest assured, when we do come up with a plan, we...

The Member and I probably saw about 60 trucks heading north, just on the Saturday alone, driving from Norman Wells to Wrigley. We need to continue working with industry. This past winter season we’ve had an investment of $1.2 million, through partnerships with industry, for enhancements on the winter road. Next season we anticipate that work going a little bit further north towards Fort Good Hope. Our anticipation is that industry will want to continue to work with the Government of the Northwest Territories on ways to enhance the winter road. That includes applying water to the road to build...

That happened about 10 years ago with the location of putting the bridge in its current location. It does need to be moved. It’s a sizable piece of infrastructure that would require probably looking at relocation and realigning on more of the all-weather road alignment of the highway. It is going to take a capital investment of probably somewhere in the magnitude of $2 million to $3 million, I would imagine, to move the bridge and put it where it needs to be. It is in the works and I can assure the Member, having seen it for myself, that bridge will be moved as soon as we can possibly move it.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to welcome a constituent, Ms. Lone Sorensen, in the gallery.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ll take that question as notice.

Thank you. ITI is the lead on the socio-economic agreements and there are a number of components included in the SEAs, that’s why we work with Health and Social Services and with Education, Culture and Employment.

On the training side, there is a component to training in the SEAs, and we certainly look to Education, Culture and Employment when negotiating socio-economic agreements so that we can ensure that there is training, that dollars are going to be put into training people here in the Northwest Territories for jobs. We, again, are continuing to work through Mr. Lafferty’s lead with a pan...

We have a contingency. We don’t get into any project with the belief that it’s going to go over budget, so for the Member to ask questions about the what ifs, what if you go over budget, that is a hypothetical question.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The maintenance on the Deh Cho Bridge is own forces and we’ve had to adjust the maintenance in the Fort Providence area to account for the Deh Cho Bridge. In terms of additional costs, you’ll see in the budget there’s $259,000 in additional costs to maintain and operate the Deh Cho Bridge. Thank you.