Michael McLeod

Mr. Chair, we have already been to Tuktoyaktuk. This legislation is already in place. However, that information regarding the access to the airside is not part of Bill 14.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I would like to introduce Mr. Russell Neudorf, the deputy minister of the Department of Transportation; to my right, Mr. Paul Guy, the assistant director of airport programs and standards, Department of Transportation; and, Ms. Janis Cooper, legislative counsel for the Department of Justice.

Mr. Speaker, the work continues to go ahead on the Bear River bridge. We did some early design work. We have done some early scoping and costing of the area. We have also had several meetings with the community to talk about the actual location of where this bridge can be accommodated. These meetings were very well attended. There was some good discussion. We feel that we are quite comfortable, along with the community, as to the actual site of the bridge. We have hired a company to do some pricing on this project. Some early costing has shown that this bridge will more than likely...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it is always good to get a compliment on some of the work and initiatives we have done in the different areas of the North. We have certainly put a lot of effort in the Sahtu. We have been working this year, I think, in the Sahtu region. We are working on two fairly large projects in terms of bridging. Big Smith and Little Smith creeks, those will be going ahead. We started doing some of the initial work this past year. We will continue to do that. The cost factor is a concern. Our prices are coming in fairly high. We are looking at ways that we...

Mr. Speaker, the money included in the budget is money identified on a cost-shared basis through agreements with the federal government. There were a number of projects that were included in our submission called Corridors for Canada. There was also the Strategic Highway Infrastructure Program and other agreements signed with the federal government. Some of these were earmarked for specific areas. In the case of the bridging program and the Mackenzie Valley roads, it was to deal with some of the resource development pressures. We had included the Tuk to Inuvik stretch of road in our...

Madam Chair, I don’t believe any of our acts spell out a formal process to appeal any infractions under this bill. There is, of course, the standard procedure, as in the highway act. If you don’t feel you were treated fairly, you could go to the staff, you could go to the senior management, or you could go to the Minister. If it’s a traffic ticket that is issued, then you can appeal it through the court system. There is a legal process. We don’t have it spelled out, written anywhere in that respect, but neither do any of our other bills lay that out in a step-by-step manner.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the issue of gravel in the community of Tuktoyaktuk and the source of gravel has been a long-standing one that the community has raised on a number of occasions and the department has been looking at for a long time now. In the 1990s, they were able to construct a kilometre road and there is still another 22 kilometres that have to be constructed. We did have several meetings with the community and members of the community over the last while to discuss this issue. We looked at different ways that we could try to fast track some of this with the federal...

Yes, Mr. Speaker, that's aside from the driver's licence issuance, but the issue of having the driver's licence renewals flagged if there's any outstanding traffic violations to the client is something we're still working on. We still have some detail to work out with Justice, but we are still sticking to our targets of having something maybe by this summer. We don't have any firm dates. We don't know when we'll be able to deal with the issue that we're working on right now, and that's the issue of being able to keep the information confidential and how to flag the information and transfer...

Mr. Speaker, we had committed, during the last session, that we would have a new driver's licence designed and out in the fiscal year 2006. We still stand by that. We, right now, are reviewing some of the samples that we're putting together, and we have a contractor or a consultant on stream that is working with us to do that, and we have the equipment that will allow us to start producing these drivers' licences once we finalize some of the detail on it. Thank you.

I like the tone that this government has taken. I think they should be more aggressive. I think we have to go after these people and get what is rightfully ours, because he did say that we should be our own beneficiaries.

He also asked if we should invest millions in transportation infrastructure. I say yes we should invest in a highway down the Mackenzie Valley. We should go right up to Tuk. We have to…

---Applause

We have to connect the whole NWT by road. Hopefully that will drive some of the prices down. I would be more than happy to back the Minister up in Cabinet on anything that they...