Tom Beaulieu

Again, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that we haven’t spent a whole lot of time nominating ourselves and maybe a very, very minor piece of work that was done in order to promote ourselves as a good employer. It’s a competition. It’s not like we nominated ourselves and we’re guaranteed to go on the list. Like I said, only a certain group of individual companies and governments and organizations are selected.

As far as summer students go, we’re on schedule to hire an equivalent amount of students that we’ve had every summer. As of May 2, we had hired 217 summer students, of which 70...

That type of campaign seems to have limited impact on an individual deciding to continue driving while distracted. One of the steps we are taking immediately is to increase the fines for individuals who are found to be distracted driving. This is perhaps not enough of a fine, but the fines have gone up from $115 to $280 if you’re caught driving while you’re on your phone or texting. So that is one step and we’ll see how that works. Probably we’d have to do something more severe to start to bend the curve downward. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Canada’s top employer for youth is a process where there’s a selection committee. They look at about 800 applications, roughly 800 applications at one time and select what they consider to be the top 100. It’s not, I guess, solely related to whether or not we recruit, but it makes it more attractive if we can advertise that we are amongst Canada’s top youth and student employers, then we are more attractive in that sense. In that sense, I guess, we would be assisting in recruitment from that aspect of it. Thank you.

Thank you. The department will do all it can to talk to the federal government, to meet with the federal government, have discussions, try to get the agreement signed off as quickly as possible so that there is no disruption in the work that ended last summer and that we’re hoping to roll into this year. We’re doing all we can, and unfortunately, I cannot stand up here and make a commitment for the federal government as to when they will release the money. But we’re doing all we can to try to get that done as quickly as possible.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The funds were approved and we had presented a plan to the federal government and the plan was approved, but the money for the plan and how the money is going to roll out from the federal government has yet to be determined. Unfortunately, we are still in the process of negotiating when and how the money will flow. We don’t want to spend the money up front if that’s not the way the federal government is hoping to advance the money to us, so we’re going to talk to them and then determine exactly what is acceptable and when the money starts to flow, and then hopefully...

During our meeting with the leadership when we were meeting on the Mackenzie Valley road, the leadership had indicated to us that they were going to provide a proposal to us, a proposal that will be presented to the federal government and other departments in the federal government so that they can provide some funding through various avenues. One of the things that the leadership was very focused on was to try to access some quarries and that they wanted to build some of the road using some access money from the federal government and some money from the various other agencies and departments...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. At this time what we have completed is a proposal. We recognize that this is something that’s been in the works for many, many years. This year, prior to March 31st, we as a government, with the Premier and Minister responsible for infrastructure, Minister McLeod, were able to put together an initial proposal that we forwarded to the federal government. We have received a response. The federal government is looking for some more detail, some more technical detail, maybe closer, better estimates on what the actual costs could be. So we’ve received that letter and we are...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, I can confirm that that competition was held.

Mr. Speaker, I give notice that on Wednesday, June 4, 2014, I will move that Bill 30, An Act to Amend the Public Service Act, be read for the first time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I’m not familiar with how many employees that were on the Merv Hardie at Fort Providence is at this time and how they worked the hours to get all of the individuals that are working at this time into those hours and still stay within the allowable codes for the Canadian Labour Code. I would have to investigate what had occurred at that point back in the Merv Hardie so that we were able to run that. I understand that some of the difference could be the fact that the ferry had to run longer, so we made compensation by adding employees due to the volume of traffic in Fort Providence.