I appreciate that. That was the Inuvik positions I was referring to. And the Minister, in response to the question from Mr. Krutko before, mentioned he was from a small community, so he’s quite familiar with the driving conditions. That’s fine and that’s nice to say, and talking about strategies is another nice thing to state, but you know, the Minister on this of the House has raised the issue of highways a few times, when he was on this side of the house. Now the Minister is in a position to have some direct input into all of the stuff he was complaining about, or all of the issues he was raising when he was on this side of the House. I would remind the Minister not to forget he did raise those concerns.
You know, he’s saying we have to look at the strategy, we’ve got to look at this, we’ve got to look at that, but the bottom line — and I think it’s something we’ve been trying to get across — is it
needs to be done. We can study it to death. We can write all the strategies we want, come out with all the glossy magazines we want. The cost of producing all of these magazines could’ve been dust control for probably a couple of kilometres, if not more. You talk about dust control being applied to the Dempster, and I’ve driven on it this year. I’ve driven on it last year. It’s like 50 feet, a hundred feet, little stretches. So just to remind the Minister of that.
Just to go back to my position before I close here, Mr. Chair, the Minister is saying that one person has applied for educational leave. That basically leaves the position to the other person, who because of staff retention will be offered that position more than likely. I believe this was part of the plan, and in notifying them so soon, they were maybe hoping they would eliminate themselves from the whole reduction process by taking on something else.
If that’s the case, if the one person has decided that they’re going to school, it’s going to cost us money. It’s going to cost us money because we have to pay a severance package and that, so I don’t think there’s a huge amount of savings here. In the overall big picture of the whole budget, we see a few positions…. I think my colleague from Mackenzie Delta mentioned $30,000 for marine assistants. We’ve got little bits and pieces of money here and there. These are all front-line people, and it’s something we should really have a look at.
As far as strategies go, let’s just face the fact that this stuff needs to be done. Let’s just not study the thing to death; let’s just do it. Let’s just do it, because we say the health and safety of the people in the Northwest Territories travelling our highways is a big priority. I think we have to just quit talking about it all the time and just do it. And maybe I should quit talking about it too.