Michael McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is correct; there are instances where individuals have recently purchased personalized plates and they will now incur a new cost to replace them. It’s not the full cost. It’s $25 for the personalized plate plus $10 for the new plate. That doesn’t seem to be stopping people coming forward. We’ve already had up to 200 people come in and request new plates or replacement personalized plates. We think it’s a cost that’s fair and we’ll be sticking to the price that we are trying to take.

Mr. Speaker, we’ve been writing to committee since 2009. The Member, as the chair, could have requested a briefing at any point.

Mr. Chairman, we should also clarify that we didn’t change the design of the plate. We upgraded the plate to meet national standards that require some safety, there were safety concerns. There was also a size that needed to be incorporated into this new plate, and while we were at it we wanted to be able to be consistent with the government’s slogan, which is “Spectacular,” and incorporated that as a way to promote the Northwest Territories. Thank you.

That is a good question. Mr. Speaker, the company that we had a contract with for many, many years out of Edmonton gave us notification several years ago that they would not be producing new plates for us, we would have to find a new company and the equipment they were utilizing was to the point in the lifecycle that it needed to be replaced. At any rate, even if we maintained the old plate, the cost would have been probably either the same as what we’re charging now, $10, or more.

We’ve gone to new material. We are no longer using steel for our plates. We are using aluminum. We’ve moved away...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the intent of designing a new plate and having the general public perhaps have limited input as we went forward was to retain the shape, of course, of the polar bear and at the same time increase the safety of the plate and allow the RCMP to be able to view the plate under limited light situations. Our intent is to have all plates in the Northwest Territories replaced over the next 18 months. So as you come forward to renew your plates and have a new plate issued, we think we will be able to capture all the plates that need to be replaced by December 2011...

There are roughly 30,000 plates that will be issued over the next 18 months and all the revenue that’s collected is intended to pay for the actual cost of producing that plate and that’s where the dollars will go. This is not intended to generate any additional revenue except for cost recovery. Thank you.

I thought I had answered that question. Mr. Speaker, the intent is to have everybody replace the old plate with the new design, the new colours and the new plates we wanted to have on all the travelling public, all the vehicles on the road on our highway systems that are registered in the NWT replaced by 2011. So if the person is required to re-register the vehicle, they would have to get a new plate. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise today to provide information on the new and improved NWT licence plate that will be available to the public starting July 1st of this year.

The Department of Transportation has been working closely with groups across the NWT, and has consulted with the RCMP, Municipal Enforcement and the Royal Canadian Legion, NWT Tourism, commercial carriers, manufacturers and other Canadian jurisdictions to update our licence plate and bring it up to current design standards.

Our shift to a new licence plate began when the discussions with the manufacturer of our current plate...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think it is a great idea.

---Laughter

Mr. Speaker, the Member has raised the issue of the Dempster for quite a few years now. We have been working hard to address some of the issues in terms of reconstruction that was required for that portion of the road in the North. It is something that has been quite challenging as finances have been difficult to acquire over the last while. We have managed to set a budget of I think about $8 million now annually to move a little quicker and getting more on that road. That has been our focus to respond to some of the concerns out...

Mr. Speaker, we have put a lot of energy in bridges and upgrading our highways outside of the Deh Cho Bridge. The Deh Cho Bridge, of course, has received most of the attention, but we did a lot of work on the Bear River Bridge, for example, right to the point of where we’re ready to do construction. However, we failed to attract federal investment and the project was priced out of our budgeting ability.

We have, to date, I think, built 39 bridges, mostly in the Member’s riding, so we have put a lot of attention, and, of course, not all of it is recognized and given credit for, but we are...

Right now we still continue to work on some of the Mackenzie Valley bridges through the Building Canada funding. I think we are going to have to see the Deh Cho Bridge come to a conclusion and regroup to see and revisit the concept of P3 to see if that’s still something that the Members of this House would support. Failing that, I guess we would have to wait for the federal government to provide money to build the bridges.