Wally Schumann

I think the House will be very surprised with what we have done here. There were several communications tactics used to notify the public in advance, and I will be very specific: radio ads ran from April 24th to May 10th, that is radio ads; there were two newspaper ads, April 24th and May 3rd; posters were distributed to local businesses within the community, alerting the traveling public about the situation; several tweets were issued in the days leading up to the start of construction; and a public announcement was issued later to confirm the status and estimated completion dates.

Our regional staff in the area are always prepared to meet with the leadership and the community. If that is the desire of the community, they can certainly have the Member send me a request for that, and we can have our regional staff sit down and discuss options and hear their concerns. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

With respect to dredging and waterworks, they are extremely difficult to get approvals for. We know that. The current amount of debris and silt, as I said, that are in the river carries, I have been advised that any dredging operation would be of minimal value. I think I have mentioned that in this House before. For those of you who have been on the Liard River Ferry in the summer time, it is a very dirty river, and dredging might be of very minimal value, doing that. We do know that the low water in the channel that we used last fall, as I have said, with that gravel bar presents a problem...

As this whole House knows, the travelling public and safety is number one for us. I will have to confirm with our staff where we are at on both of those ferries and get back to the Member. However, as we've updated this House in previous years, going forward the general public and Members of this Assembly need to be well aware that the river conditions can change drastically. We have had low water already this year, but, due to spring melt coming out of the mountains, things can change. Last year, that caused problems, particularly in Fort McPherson because of all of the debris that was coming...

I am not aware of there being any delays on this. We historically had these ferries in by June 2nd, so I believe we are on schedule. As I said, I can check into the Transport Canada inspection issue and see if there is an issue and relay that to the Member.

Certainly, I can follow up with that. I would like to add one more comment, I guess. It's up to the SSI if they want to have youth involvement. Myself, I can reach out to the SSI leadership and have these discussions on possibilities of having youth involvement in this, and I would encourage the Member and all Members to encourage the SSI leadership maybe to include future leadership people or youth people who want to be involved in this thing going forward.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The MoU that was signed between SSI and ourselves, the Sahtu Secretariat, was intended to formalize the working relationship between parties on the advancement of the Mackenzie Valley Highway through the environmental and regulatory reviews. The MoU provides for the creation of a working group with members of working group to be appointed by the SSI and the Government of the Northwest Territories Department of Infrastructure. Each party to the MoU is responsible for selecting its own members to the working group. SSI is responsible for appointing its own members to the...

As I said, currently, phase 1 is scheduled to be completed by end of May. That is phase 1, and we will be notifying the public when we are doing the other stuff. Neither the Yellowknife airport nor the Department of Infrastructure has received any complaints on this matter. We are not aware of any flights being delayed or any passengers who have missed their flights. Travellers have cooperated and have been arriving early to avoid congestion. We have been monitoring the passenger flow, and the interim system has been functioning well.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have the notes here. Thank you to the Member for giving us the heads-up on this. I am going to take the opportunity to actually let the public know what we are actually doing out there. These renovations are part of a larger project. The whole baggage-screening recapitalization, which is funded by CATSA, which is the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority, the funding was approved in December of 2018. The contract for the building modifications included the renovations to the oversized screening area, to level 2 and level 3 screening areas. For those of you who do...

As the Member knows, he has asked me this question before in the House, and, with climate change in effect, we are monitoring these things very closely. We are looking at all options, up- and downstream, particularly at Fort Simpson right now. Being in the fiscal situation we are in, if I had the required funding, we could probably pursue some of these things, but I think we are going to have to continue to monitor the situation and look at all options going forward.