Tom Beaulieu

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank the Member as well.

As I indicated in one of the responses, I don’t have the list of individuals that were paid out or the circumstances surrounding the payout. What I’m dealing with is the payout of a company, Rowe’s Construction, at this point. What we’re indicating is that we have the money to finish the bridge, clean up all the deficiencies. If we’re going to pay over and above that, if we’re going to pay for a deal that somebody made with another company that went bankrupt on the job, then we’d have to come back to the House for more money. It’s that simple. We can’t take money out of there and then pay...

We proposed, in the bill, suspensions because suspension and demerits go well together. In the bill, a specific offence on distracted driving will net you a suspension plus demerit points. If an individual does have a fifth distracted driving charge in a two-year period, they will be suspended indefinitely. I think they would use all their demerit points. What I can do is maybe ask Russell or Steve to add to this.

This government supports lots of local and northern businesses. This is an issue where we need to have the proper documentation and we need to have the legal grounds to pay out of what is not considered to be exactly the reason that we got money. We weren’t given the mandate to just spend the money wherever we felt, wherever we felt pressure, wherever we felt that individuals were coming and trying to present this from a political perspective. We have a referee’s report, number one, and number two, the referee’s report said two of those had technical merit, that they felt that two of those...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The department is proposing to define use, so use would be holding, operating or touching a restricted electronic device.

It’s more an issue of the volume of work. Right now, all of the airport divisions, the airports in the regions all report to a regional superintendent. One of the solutions that the Member at one time proposed was that perhaps the first step would be to move the airport operations in the Sahtu to report to headquarters here in Yellowknife, and we had looked at that. Right now that would be a bit of hybrid from what we’re doing. What we wanted to do was continue to move forward on the Member’s demand to have basically a highways section, a marine section and an airport section all in a regional...

Another important part of the Mackenzie Valley Highway has been the Canyon Creek Road. Canyon Creek Road will give people the ability, who are eventually going to be building the highway, to access material for the highway. Canyon Creek proposal has been reviewed, approved at our level, GNWT. We’ve now included it in the overall Building Canada Plan bundle number two. We are presenting three different bundles to the government. We had bundle one approved last June. What we are hoping to do is have bundle two approved anywhere between January and March of 2016, and we’re hoping as soon as that...

I can’t make a commitment from the Legislative Assembly today to contribute to a proposal, but we would be pleased to look at your proposal. If there’s a proposal coming forward, the government would be pleased to look at the proposal. Thank you.

As a result of the act, the department will be able to develop a lot of the policies that would be directed to corporations, to be directed to the government, directed to the public on ways that they can reduce energy costs right across the territory and all aspects of our business. I’m hopeful that this act will allow government to work with the public and with industry in all areas to allow everybody to become more efficient energy-wise. Thank you.

That is the plan, that we do present a discussion paper that’s thorough to the next Assembly and that a lot of the legwork will be completed in the discussion paper. Hopefully, once that is done, soon after the next government they will start to move forward with the act. Thank you.