Thank you. Mr. Nitah.

Mr. Chairman, what is the Minister doing to try to secure more money for this without taking away from already committed programs and services?

Thank you. Minister Steen.

Thank you. At this moment, I must step away from the table for a few moments. Would the committee agree that Mrs. Groenewegen now take the chair?

Agreed.

Thank you. Mrs. Groenewegen, please come forward.

Thank you, Mrs. Chair. From the comments, I have listened to some of the Members talking about the problems and the most important item I think I see now in front us is the changeover from calcium chloride treatment on roads and streets to chipsealing. So the criteria for chipsealing when we first put this forward was health. Now it seems that we are not considering health. It looks to me more and more, like my colleague has said, it's more politics. If you look at the schedule and you look at the justification for all this, chipsealing is chipsealing. It's not crushing gravel. I know you have to crush gravel, you have to stockpile to do the work, but you can't chipseal in Tuktoyaktuk on the winter road. It's impossible. Maybe you would be able to do it in the summer when you barge the chipsealer in, but you can't chipseal it. If you can't crush and chipseal in the same year, then in Lutselk'e, you can bring it in on a barge in the summertime, crush and chipseal in the same year, then that's where you should go first. I would like to ask the Minister, where is thiscrusher at this moment? Thank you.

Thank you. Chipseal is a chipseal project, like I said and it's not a crushing project. The way it looks right now, is if you look at the way it's working for Tuktoyaktuk, you are stockpiling gravel. You are stockpiling gravel over two years and only then do you do an assessment and design. We are working backwards. What's going on? Then you are doing upgrade and drainage and you don't even know how much stockpile you are going to need. You don't know how much you are going to need. So why are you stockpiling and crushing before you even do the upgrade, drainage or system and design? Why is this department working backwards? It's impossible to know how much stockpile you need. To use a project of Transportation down there and you want your chipseal in 2007 and 2008, you are in the same shoes as Lutselk'e. You can get your chipseal and your stockpile in the summer on the barge just like they can. So what's the difference between Resolution and Lutselk'e? Lutselk'e is accessible by barge in the summer. A chipsealer and a crusher can come in the same day, crush and be out in a week. That's possible. Also, like Mr. Nitah said, there is private enterprise out there. They are willing to go in any time. It's probably going to cost the same amount of money just to ship it in and ship it out anyway. The only thing is there is somebody else crushing. So you can't exclude Lutselk'e from this. Lutselk'e qualifies more than Tuktoyaktuk does because they are using the winter road as criteria and you can't chip in the winter. It's impossible to chip in the winter. I can tell you, you can't chip in the winter. So what's happening here is all politics. This is just a continuation of the supplementary appropriation that happened last fall just after session. The supplementary appropriation was a resurfacing of roads and airports and all thrown together. It was a supp and then it's becoming a chipseal project. I can't accept that. This is just politics. I have other issues here.

You are doing redesign and assessment of our roads and everything. You chipseal Rae, 300 metres of road; $300,000 for 300 metres of road that was done for Transportation. How can you justify $300,000 for 300 metres of road? It's impossible to cost that much especially if Transportation is doing it. What did you lay under it, gold or diamonds? Three hundred thousand dollars was never spent in Rae. Edzo is part of Rae-Edzo, there was nothing spent in Edzo. In order to do a chipseal in all the other communities, you have a system and design. When was a system and design done in Rae-Edzo? When was the stockpile of gravel done? There was no stockpile of gravel done?

As far as I am concerned, Mr. Nitah is right. It's politics. You are doing this in relation to projects. He's right. You could have gone into Resolution and chipped it the same time as you did a project. You did a project on Highway No. 3 last weekend and they brought the chipper into Rae. Rae was about an hour away and you were able to do it, but you still can't do it for Fort Resolution? What's the difference? There is no difference. As for what Mr. Nitah said, this is a health situation and we are going to wait seven years before you put in chipseal in Fort Resolution or Lutselk'e. That's not acceptable. Why do you put your community first, above everybody else? That's not acceptable. I have seen supplementary appropriations happening in your riding and I see it happening again. You are putting $1.2 million. How many vehicles are in Tuktoyaktuk? How many vehicles are there in Rae-Edzo? Why does it only get $300,000 of chipseal? You just turn your wheel a little and you are off the chipseal. It's not even a footprint. Rae-Edzo has 7.2 kilometres of road, including Edzo it's 10 and you are putting $300,000 in there. Maybe if I was the Minister, I would have gotten $1.2 million for my road. It's not the case, I am not a Minister. So what I am saying is Tuktoyaktuk doesn't meet the criteria because you can't chip in the winter. Lutselk'e, Resolution, they can't get access to chipseal from a private company from either Yellowknife or Hay River, so you can't deny them their chipsealing. If it's money has to be moved or whatever, you can't chipseal in the winter, so you take the money from Tuktoyaktuk and give it to Lutselk'e and Resolution.

I have another area they want to talk about. What is the Minister of MACA doing building airstrips? You are building an airstrip in Kakisa. That's the responsibility of Transportation, not the responsibility of MACA. If you are going to build an airstrip in Kakisa, why didn't you support Rae-Edzo when they built their airstrip? Why didn't this government support Rae-Edzo when they built their airstrip? They gave them training dollars and that's about it. Why didn't they give them that $3 million they spent on it? Is MACA going to reimburse Rae-Edzo? If you are going to build one, you might as well build for everybody.

Also for emergency measures, we are on a highway system. This is not the first time it's been talked about. The Member from Hay River has been talking about an emergency vehicle for quite awhile. I think that's going to become a reality, but then you have to think of Fort Providence and Rae-Edzo. There are no emergency vehicles there. There is no emergency extraction equipment or anything. Rae-Edzo is just a roadblock at Rae at the junction. If something happens at the junction, we are blocked in, just like Kakisa is. So the only access out of there is by water or helicopter. What if there is a fire? We have to have emergency measures. Maybe you should build a bridge from Rae to Edzo, so we can have an escape route. We are building bridges at the Mackenzie River, build one for Rae and Edzo. Politics, wherever things are needed to go your way, this is the way all the projects are going. I see that. Kakisa airstrip was never in the capital plan, but it's in there. We see other projects in other areas, I will get the detail when it comes, but to me, politics is a big step into what we are doing here. I only have 22 seconds and I am going to save a lot of my comments for detail, but I think the Minister and Cabinet and what they are doing is... I don't know what kind of word I can put to it without being called on a point of order, so I will stop there. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Where the policy paper stands right now is we did convene a workshop of all the stakeholders that are involved in the sport and recreation discussions last fall in October. They spent two days working through the proposals in the paper looking at options for creating a new territorial sport and recreation board, how that board should be structured, what the role of existing organizations would be and so on and they set some evaluation criteria. That included things like making sure there was adequate representation from smaller communities, making sure that the lottery revenues were distributed equally throughout the Northwest Territories. They generated a number of different options for a structure for a new board. Since that time, the partners have been consulting with their membership and they have a final workshop scheduled for March, at which time they are going to be asked to come forward with a recommendation to the Minister for a new board structure. Concurrently with that, we are also looking at reviewing and updating the lottery regulations, so hopefully we will have some progress on this early in the new fiscal year. Thank you.