Tom Beaulieu

If that’s a new project, then it will have to come to the House for approval. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’re going to meet with the city, myself and the MACA folks. I’ve been sitting here arranging something where we can get together and sit down and meet with the city. We want to come up with a solution. I don’t want to stand here and say that the solution is for us to fix it and give the road to the city. That is something that I think we’re going to work on together. Thank you.

Like I indicated, there’s no easy solution. Even if we were to build an underpass, again, that would be fine for individuals returning to Niven because they would be facing traffic and then going under the underpass to get home to their proper side or the Niven side of the road. But that doesn’t solve the issue of the people coming to the city because their backs will be to the traffic. Then, as most people know, the highway becomes sort of a three lane as you turn into the Legislative Assembly and the museum. So, again, that’s a little bit of an unsafe area for pedestrians to be walking.

At...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Back in 2011 there was a Public Transit Fund that was given to the city to try to resolve the issue of the crossing at Niven Lake. After carefully examining the project – they were looking at an underpass, actually – after carefully examining that and having some difficulty with getting some land on the Niven Lake side of the road, it was determined to be unfeasible and the money was spent on another transit project within the city. Thank you.

Like I indicated, we will meet with the City of Yellowknife. If a solution is for the City of Yellowknife to improve the road, if it needs improvement and it’s agreed on this side of the House and that side of the House that we can do a supplementary appropriation to pay for the road that’s been rebuilt to standard by the city, then that’s the direction we’ll go. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I wasn’t aware that that was a substandard access road. So, the reason that we weren’t fixing it is because I didn’t know it was a substandard access road.

Like I said, we are going to meet with them. The Member is correct; this road has been discussed for a long time, since that development has occurred, and we’re all concerned about the safety of the pedestrians who are using that road to access the city. We want to sit down with the city and MACA and come up with a solution that will be feasible and will work for the safety of the people accessing that road. Thank you.

The solution most likely lies outside the jurisdiction of the Minister of Transportation; however, we will meet with the city. We will talk to our MACA counterparts. If there’s going to be a new hotel built in there, maybe there’s a solution where there could be a trail coming off this end of the Niven Lake development, coming into the area near the Explorer. That’s the only solution.

Any time you start having traffic on a road that has fast-moving vehicles, it is an unsafe situation. It would be similar to just having people walk on the road down Franklin as opposed to walking on the sidewalk...

Mr. Speaker, I apologize for not answering the question the first time. We have been looking for a solution. It’s a very difficult situation. The thing is that we have to get the people from the Niven side of the road to this side of the road, on this side of the Assembly at some point before they get to the rock cliff on which the Explorer sits, because at that point there’s no more room on that side of the road. So at any time you get walking traffic, people who are walking across the road, which was fairly high speed traffic right up to here – it was 60 kilometres – so the signs were moved...

Thank you, Madam Chair. The fuel originally comes from a refinery in Edmonton and then from there we truck it to Hay River and distribute it from… Pardon me. We rail it to Hay River and then from there we truck it to the area. Right now we are trucking it to all the communities that we’re responsible for.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is part of the original bundle. We had started the Detah road with capital. We put capital into the first section of it, and it was an opportunity to finish off the Detah access road using Building Canada Funds where we thought we would achieve some cost sharing, so we moved it into Building Canada. We only need it for one year, then we’re finished that access road.