Michael McLeod

Mr. Speaker, after the Member’s comments yesterday in the House, we did a follow-up. We are and we will be providing the reports to the Member if not tomorrow, then early next week. The reports indicate that there is no asbestos in the air. The air quality reports all report that the air is safe.

Mr. Speaker, the answer to that question is yes. Each community has a different income threshold, whether it’s the maximum or the minimum, and each income threshold is designed and calculated from the cost of living in that community.

Mr. Speaker, we have a number of programs that have been incorporated in the last while to assist the people across the North to get into home ownership or, in the case of repairs, to apply for repairs. In each case there is a threshold that is established. We look at calculating the maximum construction cost. We look at factoring in the interest rate, land costs, shelter costs, and we also then amortize that over a 25 year period.

For the most part, Mr. Speaker, it seems to be working well. In the last while we’ve had a huge investment in home ownership through the Affordable Housing...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise in the House today to inform Members that effective October 1, 2008, penalties under the NWT Motor Vehicles Act have changed. Fines for speeding in school and construction zones, along with fines for driving without proper insurance and without an authorized driver’s licence, have all increased.

Increasing the fines in the school and construction zones will help protect the safety of children and workers and others who use the highways. Driving at slower speeds provides for a greater driver reaction time. High penalties will be combined with increased enforcement...

Mr. Speaker, the contract has, as the Member indicated, been signed under a maximum guaranteed price, and we expect any delays or things of that nature to be borne by the contractor and the corporation. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, certainly, we can commit to doing that. We’ll share the information with the honourable Member and also give him the time and the dates that we plan to go into the community of Resolute and share that information with the community. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is correct. There was in the June budget $1 million budgeted for work on Highway No. 6. The work is ongoing. It’s a late start in our season, to have our budget approved in June. We have done the design assessment. We’re working on gravel sources, and we’ll continue to do so.

Mr. Speaker, we’re on schedule. The bridge is anticipated to be built by 2010. There is, as the Member indicated, some slippage in time frames. At the initial start of this project some material didn’t arrive as was expected, and also the high water deferred the initial start-up.

We are behind a little over a month, a month to six weeks. We expect to have all the four piers done over the winter, and we don’t expect any cost overruns.

The Member is correct that work can commence very quickly once all the design, once the drainage, once all the surveys are done — gravel production, everything else is completed. In this case we still are doing the design and we have completed the majority of what we plan to do. We want to go into the community and share that information with the community that the Member represents and move forward. Providing everything is in order, we hope to have the work done by the end of November, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, that’s a commitment we’ve already made through the New Deal initiative. It’s a commitment we made to all communities — that we would work with them. Some communities, however, have really been able to grab this whole initiative and move forward rather quickly. Others are struggling, and we still have to work with a number of communities. We will continue to do that. We are already doing that with some of the other funding sources that are coming forward.

Of course, there are still a number of challenges we have to continue to work toward solving, and that is in an area of capacity...