Mr. Chairman, it's an interesting idea. I am not sure what the technology would cost us to be able to do that. It could probably, at best, be done only from the south side because on the north side, there are too many other alternatives, that people may not be going to the ferry. They may be going somewhere else and we would never know. The cycle time for the ferry is about 20 minutes. It is on demand and we try to keep it going about every 20 minutes. We could look at the cost of doing it and see how it would work, mainly on the south side. We have to look at what the technology would be and hope that every vehicle that trips the signal, whatever it would be, would continue on to the ferry and not stop to have a picnic someplace and us sitting there waiting. We can look into it, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's a hit and miss thing. I heard the Minister say the ferry goes on demand, so they wait until their vehicles are all over. If it was on a scheduled crossing, then people approaching could also plan their arrival at the ferry crossing from the south side to coincide because they know the ferry is there, but it's always just a guess and quite often if you are wrong, it can make quite a significant difference to the time you are anticipating your trip to take. If you just arrived there as the ferry is taking off, it is a fairly lengthy wait there. I think the ferry service is excellent and I have even experienced on a few occasions where the ferry might have just left the shore and somebody will come and the ferry operator will come back and get you, which is very, very considerate. But they can only see so far from that wheelhouse up in the top of the ferry.

So either having it on a specific time frame, so we could plan for that or I don't think the technology would be all that expensive to send some kind of a signal that the traffic was coming. I don't think people would generally go someplace else on the south side, other than straight to the ferry. I would just like the department to consider it. I know they have a camera now at the ferry crossing that you can look at on-line. I think that's very progressive and very helpful. Certainly when it's the time in the season when the ferry runs intermittently, it's very helpful for people like ourselves who have to drive an hour-and-a-half or two hours to get to the ferry... I shouldn't say how long it takes. Let's say two hours to get to the ferry from Hay River. It does help us plan to be able to click online and I think it's probably helpful to the people of Hay River service station too because I am sure they are plagued by phone calls from people wanting to know what the status of the ferry crossing is at that time of year as well. The department has done some very innovative things and we appreciate that, but if we could count on the ferry service until such time as there is a bridge or something a little more than a hit-and-miss basis, it would be appreciated. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Mr. Handley.

Mr. Chairman, we will look at it and see what the technology would be to have some signal between the ferry and the vehicles at some point. We want to look at it carefully because we believe the bridge proposal is moving ahead very quickly and we are soon going to be into bridge construction and so on, so we don't want to invest a lot of money into something if it is expensive but we will look at it. The other issue of putting the ferry onto a schedule, the challenge for us there is that we have a lot of traffic sometimes and if we had it on a schedule, we'd end up having a ferry sitting there full waiting to move ahead and that would be even more frustrating for people. Our view is that since it is a short crossing with a cycle time of about 20 minutes being on demand is probably the best alternative there. Thanks.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you Mr. Chairman. Someone has just suggested amongst my colleagues here, that Fort Simpson, the ferry in Fort Simpson, is on a schedule. Now, if it was full, obviously you would go, that might mess up the schedule, but if it is not a full load, if it could wait till the half hours, that would be helpful. But as Mr. Dent suggests, maybe we don't need modern technology, maybe old technology with gravel roads. The ferry operator could see the plumes of dust from miles away on a calm day. Anyway, thank you for considering. I have no further questions or comments. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The Chair recognizes Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Unlike, Mrs. Groenewegen, I don't want to go back to gravel roads. We are just trying to get them paved. I just wanted to go on the record on a couple of things. I have a couple of questions and a few statements. First of all, today I listened to, with interest, a question on the ice road for Detah and the discussion raised by Mr. Lafferty regarding Rae's situation. I also have in my riding a couple of ice roads and one I am fairly concerned about is the one leading to the Hay River Reserve. I was not aware that there's different methodology of how they are constructed and who constructs and who pays for them, so I wanted to ask that first question. Is the construction of the ice roads, the winter ice roads linking the communities together, the approach, is it consistent? I would like to ask that question, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Handley.

Mr. Chairman, first of all I would like to say, we only operate the public highway roads under the regulations so, we don't know too much of the details of when and how the ice crossing, for example in Hay River to the reserve, is done. That is an arrangement between the town and the band. We're not involved at all in that one.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Mr. McLeod.

Mr. Chairman, it is still not clear to me how the Detah road can be considered a public highway when there is an alternate route. It seems the same for the reserve or the situation in Fort Rae, so I don't understand how one ice bridge got classified in a different category. So, maybe the Minister can explain to me how the Detah road has become classified as a public highway?

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Handley.

Mr. Chairman, the Detah ice crossing was included as a public highway under the public highway regulations at the time of the transfer from the federal government, and we have continued to maintain it rather than taking on the challenge of trying to have it removed from the regulations. It was done, I'm sure, at the time because of the condition of the Detah road in the days before the transfer until recently, because of the distance to travel, going all the way around the Detah road. So, it has always been there. We have not taken a look at pulling it off. It isn't a high expense to us. It's done with our own crews and equipment, it doesn't take a lot of time so we continue to do it as a service to the community. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Mr. McLeod.

I don't want to go on with this issue but I think the Minister should take some time to review the situation because I don't see the difference and I don't think most of the people in the Northwest Territories would see the difference if we are talking between the Detah road and the reserve road and the road in Fort Rae and there are probably others. I do want to use up my time to talk about a couple other things.

For the record, I think we have been really working hard the last couple of years and the department has been able to do quite a bit of work in the area of community access roads and I think it is something that has been overlooked in the years prior. I know recently in the communities that I represent, that they are quite happy with the situation, however, there is still a concern that the funding is very tight and there has to be some new dollars identified. The reserve road is a project that is going to require about $4 million dollars and, at $200,000 to $300,000 every year, it's going to be a considerable length of time before we can see that road paved or at least straightened. It's a dangerous road. We've demonstrated and proved and brought up the stats to show that and I was really happy this past year, we did some work and we would be happy to do a lot more so I wanted to go on record stating that new dollars or any new dollars that we see from within maybe should be targetted to this initiative.

I also wanted to raise the issue of stockpiles and the gravel requirements in the different areas and different regions across the North. In a lot of cases, other departments have to depend on highways to provide that crush material, and we certainly have been in some situations where we've had a lack of gravel for a number of years and we've had to use alternate material that is really not up to par and causes all kinds of problems on the roads and on the streets.

One area that I did raise in another committee that is quite a concern to me is in the area of training. I think in my opinion that Transportation is certainly in an excellent position to provide training in some of our communities. In a lot of cases, we don't have a lot of construction that is actually community based. The government projects and the government initiatives are in some cases the only game in town. That is the only activity that is going on. It's the only stable workforce that we can count on to provide some training. We've been quite fortunate in the community of Fort Providence where we've seen a number of engineers and a number of captains trained on the Merv Hardie as a result of the government and the company working together but I still think we can do more.

I know the department has created a couple of apprenticeships, apprenticeship positions but however, they are immediately located in the regional centers. That really doesn't do us any good in the smaller communities. I think every department has to try to target some positions that they can take in the communities. We have already been told that we will never see a big jail or a big hospital in smaller communities but maybe we can alleviate some of the problems with some full-time jobs, especially training positions if we can locate them there. With highways and with transportation having the shops and with trained expertise there, we should be able to at least have apprenticeships.

I've also been contacted by a number of people that feel that Transportation should also try to do more. There is very little in terms of training for their own staff and it's very difficult to get upgraded. Other departments have utilized programs like school or community government to upgrade their people in their communities and bring them to a different level. We don't see a whole lot of that going on in the communities with the Transportation staff and you kind of come into the game at one level and you stay fairly stable. I think there has to be more initiative in that area.

One final thing I want to bring up, Mr. Chairman, is I've noticed especially this year and it is something that is ongoing, when the ferry shuts down we have a lot of people that were intending to travel through and then are sometimes caught on one side of the river, especially when the ferry shuts down in the fall. It's not so much a problem on the south side because we have notifications, we have signs at Enterprise, but we don't have signs on the north side of the river. I think we should have one at least when you are leaving Yellowknife. You would not have to drive all the way to the community because sometimes notice is given while people are en route. Maybe even one at Rae. I am not sure where the best place would be to situate a sign, but I think we need that kind of notification to the travelling public. I would encourage the Minister to look at that. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Handley.

Mr. Chairman, I will speak to part of this and then ask Mr. Vician to give more detail, particularly on the staff training. We are quite proud of the amount of effort and our success on staff training. I don't want to leave the impression that we aren't doing a lot because I think we are doing a tremendous amount for people in the department. First of all, on the apprenticeship training we agree with the Member, Mr. Chairman, that we have to find ways of making our apprenticeship trades training more accessible to people in the small communities. The Department of Education, Culture and Employment have recently told us that they are reviewing the Public Service Career Training Program in order to try to make it more friendly to the people in the small communities. Probably in the small communities, we will have to have individuals who would be willing to do some of their apprenticeship training in the small community and then maybe go into a regional centre to finish off the training or take pieces that they may not be able to get, experience, in a small community. So there would be some movement back and forth. We agree with the Member. We are working on ensuring that at least in a situation like Fort Providence, we are able to do something there.

The current situation in Fort Providence is that Education, Culture and Employment have agreed to pick up 50 percent of the salary, the cost. We would have to see if we can identify something on our side as well.

On the signs, because of recommendations, or as a result of recommendations from the committee, we are in the process of reviewing our signs and some of the sizes and locations and so on. So we are in the middle of doing that. In terms of the ferry in particular, there is the toll-free line and there is also the Web site. On the Web site is the notification board, but if there are ways to improve that, we certainly want to do it for the convenience of people using the public highway system.

On staff training, I will let Mr. Vician speak to that one. The other one the Member raised has to do with the access road program we have to connect communities to the main highway system. We, too, wish we had more money to complete these projects. Some of them are fairly expensive, but we feel it's a good initiative. In this main estimates proposal, we put forward what we can. We've identified $1 million to go into this program and we've tried to distribute it as fairly as possible to everyone. With that, I will turn it to Mr. Vician to briefly give us an overview of some of the main things we are doing in terms of staff training.

Thank you. Mr. Vician.

Thank you, Mr. Vician. The Chair recognizes Mr. Lafferty.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Mr. Handley.