Thank you. Item 13, tabling of documents. Item 14, notices of motion. Mr. Antoine.

Item 14, notices of motion. Item 15, notices of motions for first ready of bills. Item 16, motions. Item 17, first reading of bills. Item 18, second reading of bills. Item 19, consideration in committee of the whole of bills and other matters: Bill 1, Appropriation Act, No. 2, 1995-96; Committee Report 2-12(7), Report on the Legislative Action Paper on the Office of Ombudsman for the Northwest Territories; Committee Report 3-12(7), Report on the Review of the Legislative Action Paper Proposing New Heritage Legislation for the Northwest Territories; and, Committee Report 4-12(7), Report on the Review of the 1995-96 Main Estimates, with Mr. Whitford in the chair.

Agreed.

---Agreed

1995-96 Main Estimates

Department Of Transportation

Absolutely.

All the time. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, I will need assistants.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As they say, better late than never, but on my immediate right is Mr. Gamble who is the deputy minister of Transportation, a growing, efficient department.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yesterday, some of the Members talked about the federal government plans to phase out the automatic weather observation system in the near future, as well as the remote communities outlets, RCOs, in this part of the country. In fact, according to my understanding, their plan was to phase out the observer communicators to replace them with automatic weather observation systems, AWOS, and with remote communication outlets, RCOs.

According to my information, Mr. Chairman, this was done in the Edmonton area and, Mr. Chairman, the system proved unreliable about 60 per cent of the time. Mr. Chairman, in the Kitikmeot region, the communities are scattered, and, in most cases, the only means of transportation in the wintertime is by air, of course. Medical evacuations are done by air. It is a long distance from here to Cambridge Bay. Mr. Chairman, in the past 20 years -- also according to my information -- there have been about 100 people in the NWT perish because of the weather; especially in winter when the daylight is very short. Mr. Chairman, I don't think the federal government should wait until an aircraft crash occurs in this part of the country. I would urge the honourable Minister of Transportation and the government of this particular jurisdiction to try and convince the government that in the northern part of the country electronics are not reliable. Also, Mr. Chairman, if we replace the observer communicators with the automatic weather observation systems or with remote communication outlets, we would be losing some very important jobs. We don't have too many jobs available in this part of the country and I would, like my colleagues who have spoken to the issue, urge the honourable Minister to communicate with the federal government that what they propose to do is not acceptable in the north. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to assure the honourable Member from Pelly Bay that we concur entirely with him on this issue, that we have advised the federal government and the aviation industry that we do, and that we are working aggressively to pursue any replacement of flight service stations with a CARS replacement. While that may not be a perfect scenario, it certainly has worked very effectively over the years in other territorial communities. That is our position, Mr. Chairman. We concur with the Member.

(Translation) Mr. Chairman, I have a question with regard to what we were dealing with yesterday. This is going to be directed to the Minister of Transportation. I would like to thank him for the excellent job he has done up to today. I would like to point out that the communities are different, in size and population. Some of the communities have more people, some have fewer people. The smaller communities do not have larger scheduled flights going in to these communities as often as they have in the larger communities. For instance, in my community the airport is very small and because the airport is small only smaller aircraft can utilize the airstrip. We have larger scheduled flights going in on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

Another concern I wanted to raise with the Minister of Transportation; of the aircraft going in to Lake Harbour and smaller communities like Lake Harbour, a lot of aircraft that are being used are older models. I would like some consideration put into upgrading airports and airstrips.

I understand that part of this is the responsibility of the federal government, under the Arctic airports, but I would like to convey this message to the Department of Transportation. I want to know if our airport can be upgraded. We have asked for this before, for the future. I understand that in 1997 they are going to be upgrading the airport in Lake Harbour. But we have a lot of problems in our community now. When trying to get extra food for the community store; a lot of times the plane is not able to make it on time. As well, other goods are needed in the community, but because aircraft are too small, they are not able to carry all the goods and supplies that are needed for the community.

It is fortunate that we have not had any major accidents on our airstrip. Mr. Chairman, I will be asking for support to upgrade our airstrip in the near future. Sometimes, because, of the funding being cut, we think that we might not be able to get this airport and other airports in the communities upgraded. There is also the problem of passengers trying to make it home; sometimes they are not able to make it home on a certain flight because of the airstrip being too small.

I am concerned with Lake Harbour in particular and I just wanted to bring this up, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I made a lot of comments yesterday during committee of the whole. The Minister started to reply, he said I will start with the easy ones first. While he was still replying we ran out of time, so if we could pick it up there.

I don't really want to reiterate what I said, but basically I talked about a concern with the highway maintenance operation. I said that the highway maintenance operation is going to be dropping quite drastically -- by $1.54 million -- and it will have a significant impact in my area. I also stated that the total sum of the department dropped by $1.082 million in 1994-95. That is the total that was dropped from previous years and the total amount dropped in the highway maintenance operation is $1.58 million. So there is a difference of $498,000 that went into other parts of this department's operations. If you are looking at the revised, it is still a significant amount that has gone into the other parts of the department. That is the way I read it.

I was concerned about it because if you are cutting back in one area to boost another area -- and I don't know if that is going on in this department -- the people I represent wouldn't like it at all and I have to express that concern here. Carrying on with the exact impact that it may have in the communities; the highway system, the way it is built in the area, is a gravel road and it cost huge sums of money to build it. It is an investment that this government has made over the years in the highway system.

The cutbacks in the level of maintenance have never been done before and I am very concerned because the impact of less maintenance on the highway...I was involved in highway maintenance in my area prior to being in the House and I know what kind of work it takes to actually keep these highway systems in good condition. They need to work it all the time with heavy equipment, with graders in the summertime, whenever it rains you have to make sure that you repair it right away or the road will further deteriorate; it will get rough, it will have a washboard effect. With heavy trucks going on it in that condition, it will deteriorate the road very quickly. There needs to be a high level of maintenance on this highway system to keep it in good shape.

If, by these cutbacks, you are going to drop the level of maintenance to the highway, the highway will surely deteriorate to the point where if we are going to keep a highway system, we are going to have to invest huge sums of money in the future to bring it back up to the standards that we have today.

There is a safety factor as well. If we let the highways deteriorate into a washboard effect it is going to cause accidents. That is one concern that I have: the threat to human life by unsafe highways. There have to be certain standards that this government sets. If they are going to drop the amount of money for maintaining the highway, there have to be certain standards of safety that this department has to meet for the travelling public. We use the highway system quite a bit. The Minister stated statistics of 30 per cent and 10 per cent. You have to look beyond that; there are human people in those percentages who use this highway and their safety is a factor.

The other area of concern about this maintenance cut was for the tourist industry that is in my constituency. The highway system is used by a lot of tourists who come into my area; they go into the mountains to the Nahanni National Park and to different parts of that part of the country, to go to other communities. It is a source of income to communities in that area and the businesses that cater to the travelling public. I am afraid that less highway maintenance might have an impact on the tourism in my area.

There are different businesses that have contracts obtained through public bid as well as negotiated contracts and already I know that these contractors have different provisions within their contracts for how they make money. Some of it has already begun to change. For instance, the fuel that they use -- they use quite a bit of fuel when they maintain the highway -- has been taken over by the government now so that there will be less cost to government, I believe. The contracts have already changed. Some of the negotiated contracts and the companies who have got contracts through public bid say they finance the heavy equipment through contracts. If their contracts are going to get cut back, they might have to lose some of the heavy equipment they're presently financing. I'm afraid that's going to have an impact on their businesses as well as on the people they employ. In the long run, there are going to be impacts on business and on employment of the people in that area. This cutback impacts a lot of people and I have a concern about it.

The final concern I have is about the winter roads. I wanted to ask questions today in question period but we ran out of time. On March 15th, the highways into Nahanni River, Trout Lake and Jean Marie River are going to be shut down. Around that time of the year, it doesn't snow that much in my part of the country and the roads are still usable until the end of the month; for two extra weeks. How much money is the government going to save by shutting down the road two weeks early? The road is there already, and if there is no snow on it, it is cold enough and it is frozen, can the people from these communities continue to use these roads or is the government planning to put barricades up so it makes it impossible for people to use the highway?

I guess the question here is, is it possible, if the weather is cold enough and it doesn't snow, if a community like Trout Lake would be able to use the highway until it is impassable? Likewise for Nahanni Butte and Jean Marie River. There are plans to bring in provisions to stock up the stores. Jean Marie River has been talking about it and they may be running out of time if March 15th is the deadline. We invested in opening the road and spent a lot of money doing it. But, if the winter road is there and there are good conditions, can they continue to use it? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.