Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Rae-Edzo section of this highway has been tendered as a design built contract and the requests for proposals was submitted to three project teams who pre-qualified through a call for expressions of interest. The proposal calls will close on October 14th with a tentative award date for November 12th. It is expected that the successful team which would start construction in December with completion of construction scheduled for July 15, 2000. The Yellowknife section has been designed by the Department of Transportation staff and it has been scheduled to publicly start tendering on October 26th. It is anticipated that construction of this section will start in December of this year with a completion in March 2000.
Mr. Speaker, the application for land use permits were submitted for each separate section of the project which was to be tendered this year. Upon receipt of these applications, DIAND ruled that the Department of Transportation could not apply for permits for separate sections, but must apply for a land use permit for the entire section of Highway 3 from Edzo to Yellowknife.
Mr. Speaker, the department had done some intensive work on the two specific sections and made two separate applications, but DIAND ruled that we should make one big application for the entire length, so the department had to do some more work between the two sections that were out there. This ruling resulted in a complicated process with extended timelines and that required the Department of Transportation to obtain and provide information for the middle section of the highway, as well, even though it is not scheduled to be tendered until future years.
To date, the Department of Transportation has not obtained a land use permit and is currently working to obtain additional information required for the process. This caused some delays because of the necessity to obtain the land use permit and it was necessary to redefine the scope of the work on the Yellowknife end of the project. As a result, the late tendering dates for both projects allows additional time to obtain this land use permit. Although the Department of Transportation does not currently have the permit, we expect that....