Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have a Return to an Oral Question asked by the Member for North Slave on June 6, 2001. The Member asked why the Department of Transportation considered highway maintenance records confidential, and I replied that I would get back to the Member with the information at a later date.

The short answer to the Member's question is that the department's highway maintenance records are not confidential. The department's maintenance staff keep daily logs, including a highway surface report that, like a weather report, records the condition of the highway surfaces on the beat for that day.

In the coroner's report resulting from an accident fatality on Highway No. 3 of August 4, 2000, the coroner directed the following recommendation, amongst others, to the Department of Transportation:

"Road maintenance records be available for future use.

Rationale: The coroner felt that access to road maintenance records was inadequate. It was felt that such records should be readily available for review by investigators."

In his investigation of the August 4, 2000 highway fatalities, the coroner met with the department's director of highways on April 27, 2000. In their conversation, the coroner and the director discussed many aspects of Highway No. 3, including its maintenance. The coroner asked for the highway maintenance records for Highway No. 3 and the director agreed to provide them. The director did not sense any urgency in the coroner's request, and did not attach a high priority to collecting and forwarding the maintenance records. Neither did the coroner make a subsequent request for the records to remind the director of his commitment.

As it was, the coroner's office completed its investigation of the fatality and released his report on May 24, 2001, without the benefit of having received the requested maintenance records.

The department had not intended to withhold the maintenance records; it simply did not appreciate how soon the coroner's office expected them and did not provide them as promptly as it might have.

This misunderstanding and the recommendation in the coroner's report had nothing to do with the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act or the confidentiality of highway maintenance records. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.