Michael McLeod

Mr. Speaker, the Member is correct; there is some money identified for planning and consultation of $1 million for this upcoming fiscal year. It’s to give us some resources to have a consultation process with the communities. We would be able to talk to the community leaders and it would also allow us to talk to some SAOs at some of the different criteria we are looking at and some of the projects in the capital plan and have a good thorough discussion on the needs of the communities out there. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I am astounded that the Member would ask the same question so many times.

---Laughter

Mr. Speaker, we realize the sense of urgency that some of the Members are experiencing in wanting to get some of the answers. Our staff has been working on drafting some of the criteria that we will be using. We have had some early discussions with the NWT Association of Communities. We are still working on some of the other funding initiatives. We plan to have our MRIF funding and our gas tax all in place by some time this year, so there's a lot of work we have to do. We have scheduled a...

Mr. Speaker, we are aware that there is some problem with overflow at the present time. We are looking at the situation. We don’t anticipate it to be a problem that will slow down the project and we’re hoping everything will go smoothly, but we will get back to the Member to talk about how we will deal with it if it comes to an emergency situation. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I guess first of all we have to offer an apology to the community of Fort Good Hope and also the Member because I had reassured him that this bridge would be up and running once the winter road was open, and the winter road has been open for some time. We’ve run into some difficulties with the Jackfish Creek Bridge. We’ve had to go out to tender on two different occasions and on both occasions we haven’t been able to attract a successful company to come in to do this work. What we have done is broken the contract up into a number of different areas and we...

Mr. Speaker, the monies that come for some of the programs that are being unveiled by the federal government, such as the MRIF and the gas tax, come with certain conditions and criteria. Although we’re quite familiar and quite certain with what the conditions and criteria the MRIF money will be tied to, the gas tax is not something we have an agreement on and we have only started negotiations last week. We can safely say that some of the money can be spent in the area of roads and bridges, however, most of the dollars will be earmarked towards sustainable infrastructure. I don’t have a...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, later this week I will be going back to Inuvik and everyone in the Beaufort-Delta will be gearing up for the carnival season. Carnival season is a great opportunity for residents of the area to gather, meet old friends and make some new ones. It is also a chance for bragging rights to see who has the fastest dogs and the fastest snowmobiles. There will be many feasts and old-time dances. This has always been a special time of the year. It announces the passing of a very long winter and the coming of spring.

Carnival season, Mr. Speaker, includes the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I believe our chipseal program is on schedule and on time and we have no intention to, at this point, discontinue the program. It’s a real need in all our small communities and some of our larger ones, also. But at this point, while we’re doing the chipseal and following our schedules, we are also looking at alternative methods to deal with some of the dust problems. The chipseal program, although it serves its purpose, it’s only geared towards chipsealing one stretch of road in a community which usually is the main street. We still have the dust problems in other areas...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The new sports council will spend this next coming year to organize a number of things including how they’ll develop their resource management plan and how they’ll develop and put out their communications and marketing plan and they also have to look at consolidating their offices, office space. We expect them to have, by this fall, a draft operating plan. We want to see business plans, we want to see a whole number of things for them to come forward. Our plan for them to start operating as an entity is for April 2006. Our first AGM for this council is April 2005 and...

Mr. Speaker, I have to admit I’m not familiar enough with the new lottery regulations. In 2004 our Department of Municipal and Community Affairs along with Sport North and the Department of Justice, completed a review of the Lottery Act and regulations and the new regulations will govern how the program will be conducted. The Member is correct; right now the control of the sports lotteries are controlled by Sport North. The new sports council is being formulated. We have set up an implementation team. They are defining the nomination process and council selection that’s taking place this month...

Mr. Speaker, it’s important that the community recognize that under the new deal, we are looking at allocating money directly to the communities as part of community infrastructure. For us, historically, that has been a fairly small amount. It was anywhere between $13 million and $17 million. As part of the new deal, this government has decided to increase that amount to a $25 million pot that will be accessible to communities.

Throughout the years as our plan has evolved, a lot of projects that historically used to be involved were not accepted, especially in areas like recreation projects...