Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a few general comments for the Department of Transportation. It's nice to see Mr. Neudorf and Mr. McLeod here, and Ms. Cook, as well.
I know the Minister of Transportation is not responsible for this file, but since I have the department officials here, and the floor on the Department of Transportation, I wanted to talk, for just a minute, on the Deh Cho Bridge project. I do look forward to a briefing that's coming up soon. We have a recommendation that's coming forward, too, in this process. One of the things that I feel, as a Regular Member, is that we should be more involved in what's happening with the Deh Cho Bridge project. I don't know whether this briefing that we're going to be getting is going to get us there; that remains to be seen. But in the past year we haven't been that involved in what's happening. I don't know exactly what's happened to get us to where we're at today.
The concession agreements are the key piece to all of this. I think Regular Members deserve and should be involved in the concession agreements. I know they're a private business deal between the government and the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation, but ultimately the government represents the people of the Northwest Territories and I think we certainly need to be a part of the rollout of the concession agreements. So that's one thing I wanted to mention to the Minister.
The other thing I wanted to mention to the Minister, as well, is the airport development, and how important that is to the future of the city of Yellowknife, but also to the Northwest Territories. Yellowknife is the air traffic hub of the entire Northwest Territories and we've got, as the Minister is well aware, interest in a parcel of land immediately adjacent to land that the Department of Transportation has identified as future need for growth for the Yellowknife Airport. That causes me some great concern that we may end up having a residential development in close proximity to our airport development, and this combined services building will be right across the street from a residential neighbourhood. Not to mention the access road that has been much talked about to Kam Lake Industrial Park and whether it has to move further down Highway No. 3 or maybe go straight through a residential neighbourhood. Who knows? Those are some pretty big issues that the Minister has to pay close attention to.
I talked during committee meetings about the combined services building and the fact that it might...I know there's money in the budget going forward here for a few years on that combined services building, but one of the things that comes to mind is that it's a combined services building, right? So whether it's the Department of Transportation looking after airports or looking after highways, I think if you housed your heavy equipment in one yard it might be more advantageous or beneficial, from a cost perspective anyway. Not to mention the fact that it gets your Quonset off the highway into town. It's kind of out of public view if it's off and contained in a combined services area with the airports equipment and the highways equipment. There's going to be a nice road put into the combined services area. I know there was some talk of having an RV area where the present Transportation yard is on the corner of the access road to the golf course and Highway No. 3. That's something that I think maybe should be looked at a little bit. Other than that, I think that's probably about it, Madam Chair. Again, I thank the Minister for paying attention to those comments. Thank you.