Tom Beaulieu

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That’s times 10.76. It would be about 85,000 square feet.

That would be a great piece of work and a great project, no question about it. It would be a big part of the Mackenzie Valley Highway if that was to be built. The community had a very, very good plan. They are in support of the Mackenzie Valley highway and it was important for them to get to the first gravel access. They had indicated to us that it was about 30 kilometres of fairly flat territory that was good ground except for two short areas, two small spots, actually, as they put it on the road where they thought there were some swamps. Aside from that, they thought it was a very easy...

We are prepared to do that.

Highway No. 3, Highway No. 4, Highway No. 7 are all tendered.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To my left I have deputy minister of Public Works and Services, Paul Guy; to my right, Laurie Gault, director of the Technology Service Centre.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The section of highway between Fort Simpson and Wrigley we are going to continue to maintain with using our maintenance money. That is a very low volume highway as far as vehicles and that go and we’re not planning on putting a lot of capital or any capital at this time onto that highway. We’re trying to concentrate our capital on the highways that have higher traffic volumes. At this point, we’re going to do the best we can with the maintenance budget to try to maintain that road in the best driving condition that we can maintain it to.

The product is approved by Boeing and it doesn’t corrode the aircraft. It is a good product and there should be no problem with it. The other product was used a long time ago and we no longer use it.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Some of the projects are negotiated and some are tendered. We have a mix of both types of procurement.

Thank you. Any of this type of work with human resources will include talking about the 900 vacancies that we’re currently carrying in the books. We don’t have the number of positions that we are evaluating for layoff because I haven’t seen any such plan to lay off certain people who are currently in the public service at this time.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The work for 2016 will be embankment improvements from kilometre 20 to 23, and following aggregate production, widening, strengthening and surface prep, drainage improvements from that same spot, 20 to 23, and then we’ll be doing some crushing and aggregate production in a pit at kilometre 3, so I guess it’s at the very beginning of the highway. I’d like to ask if I could have the deputy add to what I’m saying for the work that will be going on on Highway No. 7.