Norman Yakeleya

Mr. Speaker, the Power Corporation has a very good reliability system here. In all situations the corporation takes it seriously to review its operations, what happened, what went wrong. I’ll be happy to work with the Member and possibly the City of Yellowknife and the other departments he thinks would serve the people of Yellowknife in terms of letting them know, in terms of the power outage, where they can get hold of the appropriate type of people to advise them on the length of the power outages.

All capital projects went through the planning process. I am looking at all areas across the Northwest Territories to see about investment in our infrastructures in transportation. I would be happy to work with any Member of the House to see where we can provide safe, reliable transportation needs in terms of providing for our people to transport goods in the North.

Mr. Speaker, I’ll provide it to the Member as soon as possible.

Mr. Speaker, the Power Corporation operates in one of the most difficult environments with the cold weather, especially in this day and age. The Power Corporation also has emergency plans and policies. I would gladly look into this issue in terms of determining a type of emergency plan to have in place for long-term power outages in the communities.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this morning I was notified and am happy to report to the House that I heard from the president of the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation, Mr. Michael Vandell. We were advised the last couple of hours by Transport Canada that their navigable waters to construct the Deh Cho Bridge across the Mackenzie River was approved by the navigable waters protection office of Transport Canada. This is good news for the Northwest Territories. Now the corporation can close the financial arrangements under the public/private partnership and make preparations to begin construction...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I’ll certainly check my records with the department in terms of what type of decisions were made on this issue here, and certainly look within this government here to see if there’s any plans to move the position back into Fort Simpson. As the Member is well aware, there are other regions also that are looking at present areas in terms of where other regions are making positions and that affects other regions without any type of regional presence by our department.

I’ll certainly get the information for the Member, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I’ll certainly again ask the Member from Twin Lakes that I certainly want to work on this issue. It’s an important issue, I know, for the people in the Mackenzie Delta. It’s something that I’ll bring up with the department in terms of a list of priorities of our infrastructure needs and across the Northwest Territories.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would like to recognize one of our fine staff members from the Department of Transportation, Mr. Harris Beaulieu.

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Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my discussions with the department, I’ve been told that this machine was used at the Mackenzie crossing, in terms of experimental project, and that it was used only the one time. However, if he needs the specific dates and times, I certainly will go into sending that over to the Member for him for his review.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I’ll have to work closely with the Member from Nunakput in terms of the types of cheques that he’s referring to and requires other Ministers to be involved or requires the federal government departments to be involved in this issue here. So I would ask if the Member could be more specific in terms of what type of cheques so that I could have some direction.