Michael McLeod

Mr. Chairman, as I indicated, all of our summer purchases are done and have been delivered. Most of our winter supply is in the communities. We are not very concerned at this point with the prices up to now. We have a fairly good reserve in the tanks in Inuvik. That will help us offset some of the future costs. Right now it is difficult to predict what our summer purchases will come in at. I would expect, as the Member has indicated, that it will come in a lot higher. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, we are just looking to confirm that number at this point. Mr. Chairman, with the current budget and what was approved in our capital budget, we believe $8 million is the total amount.

Mr. Chairman, the revolving fund is something we can control as to what the inputs and outputs are for this program. We have purchased all of our fuel for the summer resupply. We have purchased the majority of our fuel for winter’s resupply. We look, as the Member raised, to the future. We expect we are going to see rising costs, but that should not affect our revolving fund. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Both projects went well. We were very happy with the work that was done with communities and they are basically all complete.

Mr. Chairman, the study is ongoing right now. We have expectations to be finalized in April. Then we will do an analysis of what the findings are and decide on the next steps from there.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We do have a document that lists all our employees. We could provide it verbally or we could provide it to the Member in written format.

Yes, Mr. Chairman, we are considering other products, more specifically wood pellets, and we are doing the assessment now. It’s 90 percent complete and we will be having the results in April.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. On my left I have Paul Guy, deputy minister of Public Works and Services, and on my right I have Ms. Laurie Gault, director of the Technical Services Centre.

Mr. Chairman, the dredging issue really doesn’t fall under our mandate as the department. However, having said that, we have concerns in this area as it has impacts to many areas of different sectors of the North. We have the marine traffic and the fishermen that are voicing concern. There’s also the issue with the municipality on some concerns that the island that’s being created in the middle of the river is causing or is certainly not helping with the flooding issues that are happening on the Hay River and to the municipality of Hay River and also to the Hay River Reserve.

We have engaged...

I apologize for missing the question. I wasn’t clear on that area of questioning. Mr. Chairman, we have undertaken to access some dollars from the federal government through the P3 Canada Program to do an assessment and a study of a portion of the winter road for consideration for realignment. That process is already underway and we are in the position where we’ve put out an RFP to do a study on this section of road.