Tom Beaulieu

Mr. Chairman, last winter we had provided maintenance at the airport with a grader. We’re going to continue that this coming winter. We thought that it performed well. Snow blowers are an expensive piece of machinery, difficult to maintain and difficult to operate. So, we’re going to continue with this and see how it performs, and then we’ll evaluate. We don’t have a snow blower scheduled for Trout Lake, but we will continue to use equipment we have and continue to evaluate.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We don’t have the information on whether or not you can get a full driver’s licence in Fort Simpson, but we know you can in Hay River, Inuvik, Fort Smith, Yellowknife. We’re not 100 percent sure about Fort Simpson, but we can check that to see if you can get a full licence in Fort Simpson.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We’re just getting some detail. I’ll ask the deputy to respond to the question.

Our regional people are in contact with the regional people from Yukon on a regular basis. I have not, as Minister, had the Minister-to-Minister discussions about the Dempster. If there was an opportunity to do so in the future, certainly I would take the opportunity to discuss the Dempster Highway with the Yukon Minister. I will get some information from the department. I know that not only the regions but I think at a higher level the departments have communicated. If an opportunity arises where we need to discuss the Dempster, I will certainly take that opportunity.

We are optimistic that approvals will be in very early 2016. As soon as we have approvals, we intend to produce the material, so we will start the crushing. Probably somewhere in the very first quarter of 2016 we should have the crushing done and then the roadwork will actually begin next summer.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. New airports, new construction comes with some issues that we usually sort out in the first couple of years. There is nothing that we’re anticipating that can’t be handled with the equipment that is there, with the grader. We know that we didn’t have the money immediately to build the airport terminal building, but we now have the money and we’ll be proceeding with the construction of the ATB.

I apologize, Mr. Chairman; I didn’t hear the question.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The parking garage upgrade is scheduled to begin this year. There was some work done on the upgrade. Some of the money was spent on the parking upgrade.

The Willow River Bridge is part of the Access Roads Program. The Access Roads Program, as committee knows, is a program where there is just a little over $1 million and sometimes a little under $1 million spent in the program each year. So what we try to do with some of the projects is we try to support some of the programs in a larger way. This is one of the programs that we tried to support and we knew going in that...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’m going to ask the deputy to respond to that.

The entire project is $11 million. With that, our intention is to survey – and the survey is commencing now – and do some crushing and producing material and strengthen the roadway. Then we intend to replace culverts where a lot of the culverts have sunk and collapsed. Also, at the end, once the road is built to a strength that we’re happy with, then we’re going to be chipsealing the road. We are going to wait for the Building Canada Plan before the actual construction begins.

Just with our relationship with Infrastructure Canada, we found that it’s better to wait and then they’re more apt to...