Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’m just wondering where the department is at with the

Dettah road progress. I know there’s a lot of work that’s been happening to partner with a local firm and so on. I believe we had a budget of a couple of million dollars the first year and I’m wondering where we’re at on that. Are we spending that this year or can it be carried over? Is it carried over here if there is a carry-over?

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. McLeod.

Mr. Chairman, we are finalizing a lot of discussion with the development corporation of the area. There are a number of areas that we’re working on for gravel production and roadway construction and quarry site development. We will be bringing something to Cabinet for consideration. Also, to the question of can dollars be carried over, the answer to that is yes.

We have right now the quarry permit. We’re working on getting the land use permit. There’s still a little bit of work in the area of engineering that needs to be done, but right now we are progressing very smoothly, I think.

I guess the one last is I know there have been other priorities that have been distracting the departments these days. I just want to make sure that they’re able to fulfill their role in helping this move along and stay on schedule. So I’d appreciate any remarks there. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, I’m assuming he’s talking about the Deh Cho Bridge. Our staff from the North Slave region are not participating on that project and they are not distracted in any form. Thank you.

Just perhaps one question, and I appreciate the Minister’s comments there. My constituents have raised interest in a biking and walking trail along the Ingraham Trail. We’ve been talking about that for a couple of years and I’m wondering where we’re at with that, if the department has that process laid out where we can go forward with that. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, I was just trying to remember when the Member had raised it, but I believe it was some time ago and as we proceed right now with the methodology that we’re using in the plans, it doesn’t include a walking trail or a biking trail. However, at some point as we move forward with the reclamation of Giant Mine we will be required to move the road and widen the road and we would plan to include plans of the nature that the Member is talking about as part of that.

I appreciate those comments. Do we have a time frame for that yet or is that still up in the air on when that would happen? I know there is some experimental freezing and so on going on at Giant and I assume that the interest is building there to get this done, but I’d appreciate the perspectives of the department. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, we’re just having a quick discussion here to see if we can nail down an actual time frame and that’s difficult. It would depend on how fast the Giant Mine reclamation project moves forward. So I can’t give him a specific time frame.

Just my last point here. I appreciate the research that is being done on highways by the department, especially in relation to the increased rate of loss and unusual patterns in permafrost. I think the Dettah Road is certainly a good example of the sorts of challenges we have and I just would hope that the department would consider that if they get into a larger pilot case or pilot program testing Easy Street material, for example. The Dettah Road of course is very easy to access from Yellowknife. It’s a big challenge right at our doorstep and would be a real reasonable case for applying that material and seeing if it works. Just a suggestion there. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. A suggestion. Mr. Minister, did you want to comment?

Mr. Chairman, we are taking what we learn from other highways. More specifically, Highway No. 3 over the years as we reconstructed that road. We, of course, are very focused on trying to get a solid base for Dettah to have their residents travel on, along with the appropriate dust suppressant in the cover. Easy Street is something that is very attractive, but at the same time it’s still fairly costly. We are testing to see how well it works and, in fact, we have done the junction at Dettah to see how it stands up and that will be something that’s part of the consideration for the final cap on the road as we conclude that project.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Next the chair will recognize Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to ask about the Minister’s safety program in terms of the winter road in my region about installing safety road signs between the communities. I know that there were some done in the past year and I wanted to ask the Minister how many signs are they going to be looking at installing this year during the winter road season.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Mr. Minister.

Mr. Chairman, the plans are to have the signs installed from Norman Wells to Good Hope. If he’s asking me how many actual signs, I’m not sure if I have that in front of me. We have different categories and size, of course, and we have a number of 250 warning signs and advisory signs that will go from Wrigley to Norman Wells and then to Good Hope and category 2, which are the larger signs, we’ll be purchasing six large warning signs to put along the route within the areas of the communities. We’re also doing a couple of signs in the area of what we could classify as category three and these will be used where there’s grade improvements and bridge work that’s in the construction phase. Thank you.

I think that will be something that’s good for our drivers on the winter roads as they need to continue doing the road improvements on all the winter roads here.

I wanted to ask the Minister about bridges. Is the department looking at considering the Oscar Creek Bridge just outside of Norman Wells? It’s on target for some different opinions as to the bridge, but the main question I have is: will this bridge be up and running? Right now it’s not being utilized. When can we see this bridge in operation, Mr. Chair?

Mr. Chairman, we have committed to doing some engineering work on this bridge and we plan to do that in the next little while. For the long term we’d like to work on the alignment of the bridge and that work will be included as part of the PDR, or the project description report, work that’s going to be done for that section. Thank you.

The Oscar Bridge has been there for a number of years and now the Minister is saying that’s going to be part of a PDR report that will take another couple more years, so it seems that this bridge is just being shuffled on to different areas. So I want to just leave it at that.

I want to ask about the Bear River Bridge that has been an issue with people in Norman Wells and Tulita. I know the Minister has tried several approaches to see how funding could be secured to the Bear River Bridge. People are quite upset that they didn’t get support from this House to put the Bear River Bridge in the plans and now they want it back in the plans. So this is a piece of key infrastructure for the overall Mackenzie Valley Highway. However, people are not too happy in my region in terms of having a difficult time putting this back on the capital plan for operations. I know the Minister and his staff has been trying to be very creative on how we’d get something like this and it’s just a real difficult piece of infrastructure to get in there and I want to ask the Minister if there’s something else that he could tell me in light of what… My file is pretty thick in terms of the Bear River Bridge, in terms of what else can he tell me and save some paper.

Mr. Chairman, the challenges, of course, in both areas that he’s raised, first of all on the Oscar Creek Bridge, is we need to be comfortable that we have the alignment finalized and we need to be able to do that through the project description report work that’s going to be done. The Member is correct that it will take a while to get that done. With the Bear River Bridge, we certainly agree with the Member’s opinion on how things have developed. We feel it was a project that should have been considered as project ready. We have the design. We have the location. We’ve done all the legwork that needs to be done. Now we are in need of construction dollars and we’ll continue to move that forward. We’ve raised it on a number of occasions with the federal Ministers. We have yet to have any success in securing dollars for that project.

Mr. Chair, I want to talk to the Minister about an issue here in regard to roads and the gravel access concept here. It’s been quite a good discussion amongst the Members here. I know that this is not the mandate of this department here. It’s really a MACA department mandate; however, Transportation has somewhat been involved in it due to the complexity of the Mackenzie Valley Highway road. It makes sense. Now you open the doors to this issue here. Would the Minister possibly consider with his Cabinet in terms of saying that we could look at a mandate for this department? That probably opens other complexities; however, I think that’s something that we should consider. I’m not too sure if it will get any take, however, if there’s money in the budget… So I want to ask the Minister in terms of this issue here, because it seems that we have some comments from the Minister in terms of partnerships on gravel source and access road. There are two that Mr. Krutko talked about, the Aklavik gravel source and the Tuktoyaktuk gravel source. So now he’s opened doors to other sources to gravel from the communities and sometimes it goes on a case-by-case basis, and I know some of the communities in my region would like to have access to gravel sources. They talked about it so… I just wanted to ask the Minister in terms of going forward in terms of a possible discussion on a possible mandate that they may consider.

Mr. Chairman, I think we’ve moved in the area of being able to help the communities a little more in this budget. We have had, historically, a program that provided money for access roads that would help clear trails or allow people to build ATV roads to historic sites or tourist attraction areas. This year, through the recommendation from the Rural and Remote Communities Committee, we have expanded and increased our budget to a million dollars and changed the criteria to allow for communities to apply for dollars to work on marine or other projects

that they see fit. That includes roads to gravel sources.

Of course, for most of the communities that do not have a gravel source… I think there are four in the Northwest Territories right now that are really struggling for gravel and access to gravel; that’s Tulita, Trout Lake, Tuk and Aklavik. We certainly can have the discussion with my Cabinet colleagues if that’s something we want to move into. It still remains a municipal area that falls under MACA, so we would have to talk with them and the Members of Cabinet, if that’s something we want to do.