Michael McLeod

There have been two occasions within the life of this project that the indemnity requirements have been waived. It was as per the FAA rules. All protocol was followed. The Member is insinuating it was done because there was a desire to ram this project through. It was done because there was a need to move forward, decisions needed to be made and it’s no different than any other time that these rules were waived. It’s been done at least 20 times since 1999, Mr. Speaker. So if the Member thinks or is insinuating we did something different, this is standard practice. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We followed all of the FAA rules. I believe the Finance Minister of the day also was involved in this decision, as were the Members of Cabinet. Mr. Speaker, the rules allow that the contracts that are exempted are also excused from the 14-day notice. Mr. Speaker, that’s the practice that almost every request or every decision of this nature has been following and we were no different. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, we certainly can look at the condition of the road and provide what was targeted for investment for that section. Mr. Speaker, in the Member’s statement he indicated that there were bathtub-sized holes in the road. He forgets I also drive on that road on occasion and I have never seen a bathtub-sized pothole on Highway No. 7. That’s not to say that it has its challenges, especially in the spring, and we’re probably going to be hearing a lot more as we move into the spring thaw and the condition of this road deteriorates and we have huge issues. It’s going to warrant further...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is right; we have had a lot of discussion on this issue and I’m surprised he’s back requesting information again, with a little more drama this time. Mr. Speaker, we have budgeted $12 million for a three-year period for Highway No. 7. We have done a lot of the work that we have indicated. There is still a lot of work that has to be done. Some of the geo-assessments have been done. The survey work has been done for the most part. We can provide that to the Member in writing. I believe we had this same discussion when we dealt with our capital budget, Mr...

We certainly can undertake to do what the Member has requested. There are serious challenges, of course, as to what the mines or exploration companies are going to be doing and that would be something we’d have to have a lot better information. We also would be challenged as to how we would pay for such a road that the Member is suggesting. Those things have to be looked at. I don’t have any problem directing our staff to start having those discussions with communities. There may be other routes that haven’t been considered yet and we’d like to look at that, if we can get that time to discuss...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Constructing a winter road into Lutselk’e is not something that we have on our capital plan at this point. We’d have to have further discussion as to routes that the Member or the community is considering and the rationale behind it.

Mr. Speaker, all the information points to the issues being brought forward by climate change. We had zero degrees temperature for several days followed by extreme cold in that area. We have this year applied 230 tonnes of sand where historically we have provided 50. You can tell that there are some challenges in dealing with ice conditions. We need to look at what are the jurisdictions doing and including some testing of our own to try to address the issue as we feel that this is going to be an ongoing issue occurring every year. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I personally take full responsibility of all the issues that come forward on our projects on any of our operations. However, I certainly can’t control the weather that has been posing a lot of challenges to us. Mr. Speaker, this weekend we had a number of flights cancelled, as the Member indicated. We had a total of six flights that were scheduled to go into the community of Inuvik. Only one aircraft was able to land. It was not due to runway conditions. It was due to the high winds that we experienced over the weekend, especially in the Beaufort-Delta.

Mr. Speaker, we are looking at it already. We have looked at the device and try to see if it would work in the conditions that we live in. At this point, we are not convinced it will work. However, we will study options, if not this particular device, then maybe there are other things out there that could work to allow certain individuals to keep their jobs or whatever the case may be. We will continue to monitor. We will continue to research it and share the information with the Member. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, we haven’t considered amendments to the legislation as of yet and it may be a challenge to do so as we have conditions that other jurisdictions don’t have. We have minus 40 below weather and this could be a real challenge with the equipment. We don’t have licensed mechanics to install this device on vehicles in all our communities and any time there’s a malfunction, this would be an issue. At this point we’re looking at it. We don’t have all the answers and we’re not considering it until we can have further research on how it would work. Thank you.