Mr. Chairman, the Member is correct; there is a whole lot of chipsealing going on and we would like to extend that into the Member’s riding in the Mackenzie Delta. We are well committed to doing the financial analysis. The Member has raised it before. We will look at the cost factor and look at the analysis of what it would take in terms of investment for chipsealing or Easy Street in the area of Fort McPherson. We are going to do that this summer, if that makes sense, and if we can demonstrate that there is some viability, then we will move to the next stage of trying to test an area in the Member’s riding. We are committed and we feel that chipsealing or providing a cover of protection on our highways is a good investment. We just have to provide the business case for it. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to move a motion.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Go ahead.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. The motion is in order. It is being distributed

now. We will just wait one minute for the motion to get distributed. Okay, it looks like it has been distributed. To the motion.

The motion is carried.

---Carried

Thanks, committee. We are on page 11-21, highways, operations expenditure summary, $54.2 million.

Mr. Yakeleya.

Mr. Chairman, it has been a while since I heard everything in sync over here. I have a couple of questions for the Minister. First one is the P3 project policy. I understand that within the Cabinet, probably discussed it that something that we would see in terms of bridges or infrastructure in regards to transportation in terms of we have a look at the P3 policy in terms of going forward.

There are some discussions by my members in the Sahtu to talk about whether the government is interested in a P3 project. They make reference to the Deh Cho Bridge and that project and if there’s something we can do or at least have serious consideration for projects we want to see built in the region.

Minister of Transportation.

Mr. Chairman, I believe the information is gone to committee and the Finance department is waiting for a response. That’s my understanding. The responsibility for the P3 policy doesn’t fall under me, so I’m just relaying the message.

Fair enough. I’ll have to check my correspondence and get back to the Minister for information. Even though the P3 policy isn’t under the Minister’s responsibilities, it is closely related to projects we want to look at. I guess I’ll have some discussions with him on how far we can go on this issue here to look at major projects we want to build in the North and in my region.

I want to ask the Minister about the memorandum of understanding with this government. I know it’s administered by ITI but there are maintenance and highways contracts, winter roadwork, airports with this department. I haven’t yet seen a percentage of contracts that are with aboriginal local business companies. I know the Gwich’in have an impressive number -- and I could be wrong -- of work that is done with this department to support local companies in their region. Is that something this department is following on their type of work that they’ve already done with the Gwich’in people that

the Sahtu could follow to support the aboriginal people?

The Member has raised a question about the MOU. That is something this department follows. It was an agreement signed by our government and the people of the Sahtu. We have targets and track the amount of investment that goes to the aboriginal governments. Or I should say the Sahtu-based businesses. Right now in the Sahtu for the last year we expended 70 percent to those companies.

Certainly that’s a good number to live up to. I hope this continues or even higher with going up to 100 percent. However, that’s something that we’ll work towards. I like the numbers here.

I wanted to talk about the issue of main street chipsealing. I know the Minister has talked about pilot projects and if it’s successful, of course, he talked about the money. I, too, would like just to comment on this issue here. It is with another department. I don’t think this department has any mandate to do this project, however, I look forward to seeing if this is successful in other regions. Would the Sahtu region be considered for a chipsealing project? It was done in Fort Good Hope. I know there are lots of potholes in that chipsealing program. It is with MACA, so I guess it gets kind of difficult sometimes to see where we get funding to do the chipsealing program and just do the maintenance of it. I want to ask the Minister about his department also looking at the Sahtu.

The Minister of MACA is listening with great interest as we talk about main street chipsealing. It falls under the mandate of that department. We don’t have any responsibilities in that area. We do have, as I stated yesterday, expertise. We have people who can advise communities and help them with the packaging up of a tender and things of that nature, if that’s required. We would certainly be happy to do that. But we do not have in this budget any money for main street chipsealing. That would be completely under a different department.

I do want to say that I know that the department does have expertise and the department I need to bring this up with is MACA. However, the Minister has offered to, if the community does want to look at chipsealing, that there’s expertise there that could assist with looking at what they can do. I want to just leave it at that rather than pushing this issue any further with this department here.

I want to ask the Minister about the contributions this department is making in terms of staff time for megaprojects such as the Deh Cho Bridge. I know they have some staff that is assigned to the project. Is this something that is within the department that there is staff assigned or dedicated to other projects

in the Mackenzie Valley for infrastructure being built for Transportation?

This question was asked yesterday, too, and I responded by indicating that we had one full-time position that was there and another half-time position that was dedicated to this project. We have a number of other people that have responsibilities, although not full time. Our deputy minister also spends time on it. Our legal people. Things of that nature. There are a couple of positions that are committed, but there are others that only have certain responsibilities in that area. There is a fairly small group of people that work on this project.

The increase to the Community Access Program is a very popular program in my region. I know I had a discussion with a resident in Tulita who took advantage of this program. He was very grateful for this program. I think he was very happy that he’s going to continue doing the work. I think he’s going to be very happy to see the increase in funding to this program, to look at the benefits of the Community Access Program. It also includes the marine services. It’s interesting to see what type of criteria is going to come forward in the application to see where the marine will be into this program. I look forward to the rollout of this program with the new funding. I want to thank the Minister and staff for working with my constituent on this program. We’ve seen benefits. Even though there was very little when dealing with millions of dollars, 40,000 or 25,000 is quite a good number.

I know we have other things. I want to ask the Minister about the Slave Geological Province study. They still have to build a business case in light of what we’re hearing on the wildlife. Is this something that they’re going to take into consideration, is the impact on wildlife if they go ahead with a business case to look at a P3 project that will go right into prime animal country? That’s something that we should maybe have a red flag when looking at it. Otherwise you’re going to have to come to another issue on this.

Our intention at this point is to do an economic analysis of the business case. There has been some work done privately by the mines themselves and if it was to proceed any further than what we were planning, then it would have to go to a full environmental review and it would also have to have funding allocated or identified to pay for the construction portion. So we’re quite a ways from having any actual scoping in that area. Thank you.

We’re on page 11-21, operations expenditure summary, highways, $54.220 million.

Mr. Yakeleya.