Wally Schumann

I believe anything that pertains to nuclear energy in this country has to follow the jurisdiction of the federal government. As I have said, though, we are paying close attention to how this is rolling out. I have had a few documents that actually crossed my desk that people have sent me about it. As innovation comes along and technology changes, I am sure that is no different than the impacts of climate change. This is something that is coming. It is something that I think not just the Northwest Territories are going to have to have a look at as an energy needs as the future comes, but it is...

I agree, the contractors have a lot of experience in that region building these ice roads. It's been the same contractors off and on for a number of years, but at the end of the day, I'm the Minister whose head is on the line here if something happens. Safety is our number one priority. We will continue to monitor the situation going forward. I can talk to the department if there are any issues arising right now on that section of highway in the Northwest Territories. As I've said, I know that a number of our ice roads have challenges right now, and as you can see by the weather outside, it's...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I hope the Member is not talking about this winter. I think the Mackenzie Delta has been warmer than years. I will have to check into the significant change from 25 millimetre to the 35 millimetre for operation of the ice roads, but I do know, and I have said it in this House a number of times, safety is our number one priority for residents of the Northwest Territories.

We have guidelines for safe construction of ice roads in the Northwest Territories and I will endeavour to have a look into why the change took place from 25 to 35 millimetres. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I don't think there are any barriers in the way. We need to assess what is going on. We are going to have our engineers go in there this spring to have a look at this and assess the problems that we are having with this section of road. We are going to do a topographical survey of this section of road to help identify what we need to remediate this section of road, what efforts need to be put into it, and what challenges we have on ongoing maintenance going forward. Once we have the engineering people go in there and have a look at it, then we will see what we are going to do going forward.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the Member knows, in 2010 there was a major reconstruction on this section of road between the highway and the Hay River Reserve. We continue to have issues with this moving forward. There are continued drainage issues along this road that we are trying to address. We have done a significant ditching program this past summer, last year, to address some of this, and we are looking at how we will continue to improve on it. We have had to return some of the chipseal to gravel to address some of the issues on this section of road, and we will continue to have a look at...

I believe this section of road is our responsibility. It's through a transfer agreement that was signed in the early 1990s that this section of road was turned over to us, so it's our responsibility going forward. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As I have said in this House a number of times, safety is our number one priority. This section of road is regularly maintained by the department. Repairs and drainage improvements are done as required. We will continue to assess this road as we move forward, as I have said, and we will make sure that it is open for public use and that it is safe.

Mr. Speaker, as per the mandate of the Government of the Northwest Territories and the commitments made in the 25-year Transportation Strategy, the Government of the Northwest Territories has been working to secure funding to advance planning and construction of critical transportation corridors in the Northwest Territories.

The Government of the Northwest Territories' three proposed transportation corridors, the Tlicho all-season road, the Slave Geological Province Access Corridor, and the Mackenzie Valley Highway, will bring great benefits to the Northwest Territories. These corridors will...

The Member throws a lot of comments out there. There are a lot of issues around both of these procurement issues, and I am not going to talk about it in this House because that is privy information. He is throwing stuff out there that is not realistic to the rest of the policy that helps northern businesses under the BIP policy. Our preference is to continue with the way we do business, and I have said it in this House a number of times: we are going to continue to the way we do business and follow our policies.

Significant amount of clean-up work has been done at the Hay River shipyard site last year. We worked closely with the Department of Workers' Compensation to ensure that health and safety concerns to the public and employees would be mitigated appropriately and to develop a plan and a timeline that the site's assessments, including human health and ecological risk assessments, to include long-term progressive remediation goals would take place. We worked closely with them.

We did some early clean-up around there around some I guess we would want to call it low-hanging fruit that had to be done...