Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member raised a very healthy list of projects that we are working on in the Northwest Territories with communities to find either improvement through the Access Roads Program to enhance road systems or, in some cases, to try and find a way to lessen the costs to have gravel into the communities.
We don’t, as a department, have a gravel source program per se. We have really tried to reach out and be creative in a number of situations including the Tuk source 177 program where we were able to access the Building Canada Fund and work with some communities such as Aklavik to do a study that identified the cost, the route and alignment of road that is going to be required to access gravel for that community. There are still other communities that don’t have a readily available supply of gravel. We would like to see if we could do more on that front. We would like to see more discussion through the rural remote community program. We are also exploring to see where we can go for next steps.
The study for Aklavik, something that has been in the works, he mentioned in his statement, for as long as he has been here. Well, that is quite a few terms, Mr. Speaker. I am proud to say the government of the 16th Assembly has finally picked
it up and been able to move forward and wants to continue to do so. We are looking to taking the next step, which is the project development report and we have identified it is going to cost a little over $1 million. We are working all avenues to see if we can find those dollars. Thank you.