Tom Beaulieu

We will not be able to do the entire highway with the four-year money that we have in the first bundle, number one from the Building Canada Plan. We will be working on, of course, the worst areas, so the highway will be improving overall every year. What the four-year money won’t be doing is the entire highway.

I will endeavour to get that information to the Member as soon as possible. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. At this point I’ve only had the opportunity to review the situation in Fort Simpson. We’ve tried to do a trial, as the Member indicates; however, we found that the two-hour break in the centre was a considerable change to the businesses in Fort Simpson. At this point we were trying to operate the ferry within the time that we have been operating the ferry at the current costs allocated to the ferry and expansion of the hours. An increase in the hours to the ferry in Fort Liard would add substantial cost to the ferry operation, most likely meaning that we would have to...

At this point, it’s necessary for us to assist the Power Corp with some fuel into Aklavik. We are currently working on delivering some tanks. I would say something like this could happen within a couple of weeks once we create some capacity. At this time, aside from the mobile capacity you will be bringing into Aklavik to accommodate the fuel for the Power Corp, the only other capacity is owned by the new private enterprise that is now responsible for fuel in Aklavik. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Department of Public Works fuels services division is responsible for the communities that are considered to be non-market communities. Aklavik is a market community. In Aklavik the fuel and the gasoline have been distributed by a private company up until this year, and the private company is continuing with a change of ownership again this year. However, we are having discussions with them as a result of the concerns from the community and the petition that was sent out.

There may be a decision made prior to the writ dropping, to continue the operations, to continue the construction of the Inuvik-Tuk Highway. There will be no decision made after the writ is dropped until after the election of the 18th Assembly. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In the committee meeting of Priorities and Planning yesterday in the House, I committed to providing regular weekly updates on this potential claim to the committee. Thank you.

I’m prepared to have the department provide the cost of increasing the ferry that crosses the Liard to 18 hours to see what has to occur, what regulations we have to look at. I’m pretty sure that if we do, I think that regulation only monitors the amount of crews that we currently have. So, if we added a crew it should be well within regulation, so the issue would be costs. So, I’m prepared to provide that information to the Member. Thank you.

We have not gotten to that point. We did receive a text message from the mayor asking if I was available for discussion. Unfortunately, I have not made contact with the mayor at this point. I am prepared to talk with the leadership, along with the private company, to try to come up with a solution for Aklavik so there’s not such a steep increase in the cost of fuel and gasoline for Aklavik. Thank you.

We are currently engaging with the new private company that is providing fuel to the community of Aklavik. We have been having discussions right up until yesterday, perhaps even today, especially with them. We, too, have a concern with the cost of fuel for operating the power plant in Aklavik, who we are continuing to have discussions with them currently. Thank you.