Michael McLeod

It looks like we are going back to the general discussion, but just as a point of clarity, I didn’t say the $2.5 billion was part of our plan, it’s part of our needs. That’s a little different from our plan. Thank you.

The number that I quoted for all our needs is around $2.5 billion or more, if we started including all the different needs from all the different departments for infrastructure, and that includes the Mackenzie Valley Highway and all the other pieces of infrastructure that have been identified as part of our needs.

As the Member is aware, in the area of deferred maintenance we are certainly playing catch-up. The number for deferred maintenance was quite large. We’ve managed to reduce it by $145 million and we’ll always be working towards reducing it and trying to eliminate it. That might be difficult, of course.

Mr. Chairman, we’ve also managed to reduce our carry-overs from an historic amount of an average of about 35 percent down to 20 percent and some of those would have been in the area of deferred maintenance. I don’t know if we have that actual number at this point. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, the issue of infrastructure deficit and deferred maintenance is of concern right across Canada. We’ve worked with a number of jurisdictions to try to bring that to the attention of the federal government. Within our own budgets and our own initiatives, we’ve targeted deferred maintenance as a priority. Over the last few years we’ve managed to bring that number down by $145 million from a huge challenge with the infrastructure deficit. We’ll continue to do so over the next while. We have targeted some dollars for this coming year and we would expect the next governments to do the...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With me to my right is Mr. Paul Guy, the deputy minister of Public Works and Services; and I also have on my left Laurie Gault, director of Technology Service Centre.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it’s good to see so many people in the House today. I would like to welcome everybody. I want to welcome some of my constituents: Clara Sabourin from Hay River Reserve. It’s good to see her here. Thank you for coming. We also have, from my home town, Jessica Field, who has come to join us today. Thank you. And an old friend of mine, Jim Allard. Good to see you here, Jim. And of course, we can’t have enough McLeod’s in the House, so I’d like to welcome Karen here with us. Thank you for coming also.

Mr. Chairman, that is still to be determined at this point.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. No, there is no indication that we are going to see an increase in costs. I think the budget remaining for the bridge is around $60 million. Thank you

Mr. Chairman, yes, we monitor what’s going on in other jurisdictions and we do have discussions with our jurisdictions as to what their best practices are. We have also experimented with several companies on trying to find a better way to make the products last. The reality, of course, is the actual concrete mix is probably 10 times the cost of chipseal and we could replace the chipseal for many, many years at a lower cost than what it costs to apply the other products, and that would really restrict our budget.

We only have a limited amount of investment in the area of hard topping the roads...

Mr. Chairman, we will be replacing some sections of the chipseal that is damaged and is causing some issues with safety from Checkpoint on to Simpson.