Michael McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have with me, on my right, Mr. Russell Neudorf, who is deputy minister of Transportation. I also have, on my left, Daniel Auger, the assistant deputy minister.

The Member’s correct; there is an increase as a result of increased utility costs. That’s reflected in here.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, I do have some opening comments.

This budget proposes increases of $4.6 million to cover forced growth and $1.8 million for strategic initiatives. It also includes two major structural changes to the department’s operations expenditures in the areas of amortization and utility and building maintenance budgets. This year the department has, on the advice of the Auditor General’s office, adjusted the way it accounts for the amortization of assets. This change realizes a 5 percent or $5 million increase to the department’s budget for amortization of capital assets...

Mr. Chairman, these are recovery of costs incurred by NAV Canada for their share of electrical, heating, janitorial, water, and ATB maintenance.

It should be obvious. It’s a one-year budget, so it’s one year.

Mr. Chairman, the $95,000 is for maintenance.

A little bit of a concern. Some of this information is in the supp. The project budget is now $7.6 million for the bypass road in Yellowknife.

Mr. Chairman, we have not considered using this pot of money to do the geotech work that the Member is referring to. That work has already been done. It has been done for some time, so we wouldn’t propose to do it again unless there was something relative to the issue of climate change and its impacts.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This money is in place at $264,000 until the year 2016-2017. In response to the Member’s question about whether or not we could use this money to do studies on chipseal or dust suppressants in the communities, the type of analysis that he’s referring to has already been done through MACA. They have all the dust suppressant testing for what would work best in the communities. We also, I guess, are doing something in the neighbourhood by testing the new products that are coming out such as Easy Street and we may consider using some of this money to see if that’s something...

Absolutely.