First of all, it does not take seven years to develop that master plan. I said, Mr. Speaker, on Friday, that the Master Development Plan was the work of the authority. They spent the money for two years and came up with a plan that was before ISDN, that’s before any other process that we had. That was not a government plan, it was the authority plan. When I took on as the Minister, I was aware that there was $65 million budgeted in the capital plan. I asked the authority to come back with specific issues that the Member for Kam Lake raised over and over and other Yellowknife Members and other Members here. There are seven critical areas at Stanton that needed to be addressed. I wanted that dealt with and that’s where we’re working.

Since then, the Member mentioned that the Department of Health and Social Services is a department of perpetual studies. That is so cliché. If the Member has been paying attention, planning studies is not a Department of Health term. That is our new capital plan process that all the Members on the other side have been working on. Planning study is a new way of doing capital plans. So perhaps Members should check the notes on how to do the capital budget process in this House. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I checked Hansard from Friday and, according to the Minister, she believes that the technical evaluation that was done in 2004 is part of the Master Development Plan. I have information here that would state otherwise.

Sorry; I mentioned the fact that this has taken seven years to get this together. They still haven’t got it together. I want to know why the Stanton Master Development Plan appeared in numerous capital estimates for four years in a row. Last year it

fell off; this year it’s nowhere to be found. I want to know why it’s not there. I want to know why that Minister is not defending that project at the Cabinet table as she should be.

Let me just re-inform the Member: the Master Development Plan was $65 million on the books. That’s not a plan that was there. That was money budgeted to work the plan. We have a new process, a capital planning process that all 19 Members accepted as of last year, which is that we have to do the planning study before a project gets into the capital process. The Member is not very clear about what this master plan is. We have a completely different process now.

The technical upgrades, the work on technical upgrading is still being done at Stanton and is separate from the master plan. The master plan is about what kind of a hospital and services will Stanton provide. The study that was done in 2002 to 2004 is a $250 million dream.

Members made it very clear here that I had to work on the seven specific areas and we’re working on that in planning study. As the Member knows, the new process is that you don’t get a capital amount in the capital budget until that planning study is done. Let me say again, that is not a health term or Health and Social Services term, that is our way of doing capital planning now in this government.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Could I request that Members keep their questions and answers a little bit shorter or we’re never going to get through all the Members for question period. Supplementary, Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Again on Friday -- and I’ll try to keep this short -- the Minister said this technical services evaluation that was done in 2004 was going to come in at $250 million, which is not correct.

I also want to ask the Minister, if this Master Development Plan is so important to the Department of Health and Social Services, how do they plan on funding the planning that’s going to be required to go into this? Where do we find how much that is?

As we speak, the department staff and the Stanton authority is working on the planning study for the Stanton Master Development Plan -- that’s what the governments do, that’s what departments do -- so that we can come up with a workable plan for Stanton Territorial Hospital that will deal with the critical areas of emergency, ICU, diagnostic imaging, and the other seven critical areas.

Also, I should state that the opening and construction of the Dementia Centre and consolidation of the Yellowknife primary clinics will drastically change the kind of services that Stanton

is providing, and that is part of the plan that Stanton is doing.

Technical upgrades are completely different from the master plan. The planning study, again, is a completely different thing.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. The honourable Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. The honourable Minister responsible for Transportation, Mr. Michael McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ll try to give a spirited response as best I can on the excitement of the projects in the Member’s riding.

---Laughter

The Member is aware that we worked quite hard to include a number of projects that have been highlighted by himself and others in his riding to receive some attention in terms of offsetting some of the safety issues that were coming forward. There were a number of issues that needed to be addressed on Highway No. 7, including Nahanni Butte, where we had expected to have the official opening to be done this year. Unfortunately, the weather wouldn’t cooperate with us and we had to defer some of these initiatives that we had on the books. We expect to follow up over the next construction season and have the official opening for Nahanni Butte to be done next year and some of the projects that were deferred for Highway No. 7 also completed for next year.

Ever since we approved the budget for 2009-2010 last fall I’ve been to Fort Liard many times to let them know that section from I think it’s kilometre 12 to 34 will have at least six or eight kilometres done this year and then nothing was done. So if the Minister could explain to me why those sections weren’t done, why there was no reconstruction work done on those areas.

There is still some work that will be done on Highway No. 7 that

includes some gravel overlay on stretches of road that we feel will benefit from it. The Member is correct; we had to defer some of the projects. They were processed through the capital plan. Unfortunately, again, the wet weather wouldn’t allow us to proceed and we felt that by proceeding, we would have to redo them next year. So we all agreed it would be more beneficial to defer the project until an appropriate time next year where we can do them properly.

They all agreed on that side, but I didn’t. In my Member’s statement, as well, I asked the Minister to advance these projects early in the construction year for 2010. What is the process to do that and will the Minister commit to that?

I apologize if nobody conveyed the information that the projects were going to be deferred. We certainly could have had the Member travel with some of our staff to show our concerns. We will commit to the Member that we will ensure that these projects are brought forward early in the construction season for next year. We all agree, I think, including the Member, that there are safety issues and we will continue to monitor that and try to alleviate some of those concerns. The reconstruction needs to go ahead and we’ll place priority on it.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Mr. Menicoche.

Just in terms of visiting the communities of Nahanni Butte and Fort Liard to see and share those, to have the residents share those concerns, will the Minister commit to travel to the Nahendeh riding in the near future?

We’ve had a very good relationship with a number of the communities in the Member’s riding. We’ve worked jointly on a number of initiatives, including the Nahanni Butte road and the Jean Marie River road. The community of Fort Liard has done a number of projects that we’ve worked with them. We’re quite happy with the results. I’ll certainly commit to the Member that I would be pleased to travel into his riding and meet with the leadership and others to talk about transportation and public works issues.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Great Slave, Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment. They are a follow-up to my Member’s statement from last Thursday where I talked about the Bathurst caribou.

As we know, the Bathurst caribou numbers are dangerously low. Currently there are a number of long-time Northerners who make a living by offering high-quality sports hunting opportunities of this herd. They bring new money into the Northwest Territories; millions of dollars per year.

What is the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment doing to help these local businesses and local people find new ways to utilize the infrastructure that they currently have in place just in case the sport hunting is cancelled as part of the Bathurst Caribou Recovery Plan?

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Minister responsible for Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. Bob McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Our department recognized that the interest with regard to what we call “consumptive tourism” has been changing. So two years ago we introduced a program called Tourism Diversification Marketing Program in which we made $5.6 million available over a period of five years so that existing operators could look at finding different ways to change their tourism products from consumption to eco-adventure tourism, those kinds of different opportunities. That program has been available to the outfitters that the Member mentioned.

Out of curiosity, could the Minister please provide me with a bit of an outline of how many of these outfitters actually took advantage of this program? Because in talking to a couple of them, I was told by them that the program didn’t really fit their needs and didn’t help them to find ways to utilize the infrastructure they have on the ground. So I’m curious; how many have actually taken advantage of this program?

My understanding is that at least two of them have applied. One was turned down and the others felt that they could not change. They were in the sports hunting business and they couldn’t see themselves fit to change their product. After that we came up with marketing dollars strictly for the caribou outfitters, in the neighbourhood of about $150,000 a year and we’ve been working very closely with the Barren Ground Outfitters to see how that money could be spent.

When I hear that response, it suggests to me that maybe we weren’t getting the information to the outfitters in the way that was needed. I would suggest that maybe it would be appropriate for somebody in the department to actually meet with the outfitters, given the new realities, the numbers that are out now, and the crisis that the particular herd is in. I was wondering if I could get the Minister to commit to having some people, particularly somebody around this Tourism Diversification Marketing Program, meet with the outfitters and see if there’s any way we can tailor

that program to help those individuals find uses for their infrastructure on the ground.