Thank you, Mr. Handley. Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I didn't want to spend an extra 10 minutes again on the signs, but I need to clarify some things here. I do agree that in northern Alberta, there are not a lot of signs about Yellowknife and you have to assume that going to Enterprise or Hay River, I think Hay River is the sign that will take you to Yellowknife. The questions I had were to do with the signs on Highway No. 3, especially past Fort Providence. When you are driving in the dark and it's the last stretch, there just aren't a lot of signs to let you know that you are getting closer to Yellowknife or Rae or the remaining signs. There are signs there, I am not saying there aren't, but they are just not... It would be helpful if they were more frequent. I don't know how expensive it is to put the signs up. I am thinking there are more signs now than there were even three years ago. Maybe it's a question of the budget being able to make it there or something, but I just wanted to add my voice to speak in favour of having more signs.

Onto the buffalo signs, there are other signs there that shows winding road, turning left, turning right or squiggly. Those are international signs with black marks on yellow backgrounds. I understand that. These buffalo signs are not. The initial buffalo signs past Fort Providence have very clear buffalo warnings on it, but the ones after that, and they were quite numerous, don't look like international signs where if you are in the Prairies, there are signs for deer, animals or something that are international signs. These are not. These are much bigger than international signs. They don't have a yellow background. It's just a shape of a buffalo and it's a huge sign and I appreciate that somebody just wanted to put it there to give us a warning, but they don't look that official. So I don't think you should assume that if you see a cardboard shape that looks like a buffalo on Highway No. 3 that you assume that that's what it means.

Perhaps that's right, but I think it would be better to err on the side of caution and get more consistent, more official looking signs. I don't think there are too many places around the world where you need to have buffalo signs, so maybe you don't have a standardized international sign. I do believe that this is not just a matter of asking people to understand what you mean. Signs have to say what they mean without asking too many questions and not having to guess too much. So I will end there and ask for another time. Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Handley.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just in follow-up to the Member's earlier statement as well, I just wanted to point out that after this next round of construction on Highway No. 3, there will only be a little over 30 kilometres of unconstructed road. I believe that's to be done this summer and some the following summer. So we are getting that piece of bad road gradually narrowed down and we will have to find ways of finishing it quickly.

On the signs, we do have that special joint committee between ourselves, RWED and the resource management committee in Fort Providence looking at signage to warn people of bison. The big bison signs we have there now were developed jointly between RWED and ourselves. They are based on a standard that is used in Yoho National Park. There is no universal sign like that, like the little yellow and black ones and we do have some of those warning about bison, but we used what we thought was a reasonable standard. I'll take the Member's recommendations back to the committee and look at ways we can improve those signs.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Before I go on, I would like to recognize a constituent of mine up in the gallery, Mr. Russ Look. He's no stranger to most of us. Welcome to the Legislature.

---Applause

The Chair will recognize Mr. Nitah.

Thank you, Mr. Nitah. Mr. Handley.

Mr. Chairman, the Member and I have discussed this a number of times. I think generally it's a good suggestion. We want to continue to work with the current contractor. We are in negotiations now to finalize that for another period of time. So this is something that we'll take up with them because it would be part of their contract since they do the maintenance on that road for us.

When it comes to some of the more specialized areas like chipsealing, because there is a limited amount of chipsealing we are going to be able to do each year and the purchase of the equipment to do chipsealing is very expensive, we want to be careful before we enter into a contact with someone where they would buy that equipment where they would start doing chipsealing on a piece of road, otherwise they may find it's not a very good business venture to get into. Certainly on the training side, then yes we certainly want to work with the contractor over the longer term to do as much training as we can as we do our highway projects.

Because of limited money, I don't believe there is any chipsealing scheduled for this year on Highway No. 6. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Mr. Nitah.

Thank you, Mr. Nitah. Mr. Handley.

We agree with the Member that you don't just take an old piece of road and just dump some chipseal on it, it just isn't going to last. We do as much upgrading on the road and drainage work as possible and as we feel is necessary in order to have a reasonably good chance at chipseal lasting. There have been some difficulties, particularly last year with some chipseal that was put on in the fall. We will go back and fix those areas this year. I think last year, and probably every year, people want to see the chipseal. We are always under pressure to do more chipsealing. If we just did a lot of upgrading and rebuilding roads, they would get frustrated with us because we are never getting the chipseal done. So we try to get a balance in there and that balance is determined by the condition of the road, as well as the amount of traffic on it.

On Highway No. 6, like a lot of our other highways, generally the chipsealing is good but there are some spots that have to be repaired and we will do those ones. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Mr. Nitah.

Thank you, Mr. Nitah. Mr. Handley.

Mr. Chairman, yes, we will work with the contractor. We will work with our own forces and try to improve on those areas. There are probably some areas where, in talking to some people, they could have told us putting chipseal down on this piece or that piece will not work. We will go back this year and fix all of those spots. In future years, we are budgeting $500,000 for the four years beginning 2004-05 right through to 2007-08 to continue to do the upgrades on that piece of road. How much we will have to spend upgrading the road, how much we will have to put into chipseal, I am not sure yet.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Mr. Nitah.

Thank you, Mr. Nitah. Mr. Handley.

Mr. Chairman, just on the issue about emergency services and how well prepared we are to respond to them, how well prepared the people are in the communities. Last November, the emergency measures organization, our department, did a tabletop or mock exercise on emergency situations. We found that the people in Lutselk'e were very well prepared to handle that kind of situation. We do that on a regular basis. We work closely with each EMO in doing that because a lot of the responsibility falls to that organization. We will continue to give that as much emphasis as we can afford to.

On the issue of the pollution from high flying jets and so on, the upper air space is under the jurisdiction of the federal government. As a department, we certainly do not get involved in monitoring what is happening and the changes taking place since the fall of the Soviet Union and so on, but those are issues that may be better directed to the Minister for environment, Mr. Antoine, because that is something that they would be dealing with the federal jurisdiction. Our department has not done any monitoring of that kind of situation. Thanks.

Thank you, Minister Handley. Mr. Nitah.

Thank you, Mr. Nitah. Minister Handley.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, let me say that we do these mock exercises, table top exercises, live exercises on emergency response regularly. We do it at all 27 airports in the Territories and given the limited capacity in a lot of the smaller communities I think we are doing the best we can along with the EMO.

On the issues of the higher altitude pollution and so on, I will talk to Mr. Antoine about that one. I do not know. I do not know if the pollution stays there or if it is blown around. There are some pretty strong winds blowing at high altitudes, 100 and 200 mile an hour winds that are blowing it. So there is probably a lot more pollution all over the globe as a result, but it may not necessarily be caused by jets that are flying directly over us. It could be blowing in from anywhere. I will talk to the Minister of environment about it.

On the military and reliance on the military, yes, they come out of Winnipeg or Trenton, Ontario or somewhere a long ways from here. When they respond to emergencies they are on 24-hour call and they are off the ground pretty quickly if an ELT goes off or something like that. Again, we are not directly involved in it as a department. We understand that there is a joint committee made up of federal agencies responsible for emergency response in remote areas -- it includes DND and the RCMP and I am not sure who else on it -- that are looking at the issue that Mr. Nitah is raising with us. I think it is one that is looked at seriously by all of us. Thank you.