I’ll call Committee of the Whole to order. The first department up for capital estimates is the Department of Transportation. I’d like to ask the Minister of Transportation if he’d like to bring witnesses into the Chamber. Mr. Ramsay.

Yes, thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Does committee agree?

Thank you. I’ll ask Sergeant-at-Arms to please escort the witnesses into our meeting.

I’d like to welcome Mr. Russell Neudorf, deputy minister of Transportation to our proceedings this afternoon. We are dealing with detail for the Department of Transportation. If I could direct Members’ attention, please, to page 9-4 of their capital estimates book. Transportation, activity summary, airports, infrastructure investment summary, total infrastructure investment summary, $1.15 million. Oh, you were going to jump in. Sorry. Okay, I didn’t see anybody’s hand up for general comments. Let me call general comments. Does anyone have any general comments on the Transportation capital budget? Mr. Dolynny.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thanks to the Minister and Mr. Neudorf for being here today, talking about Transportation. General comments I have are revolving mostly around the bridge for the next couple of minutes here. Obviously in today’s address the Minister has indicated $10 million more, making the grand total thus far for the bridge at just over $192 million. I guess the concern I have is, and I think the concern

that many people in the North have is, is that the cap in terms of what this project is going to cost?

Obviously over the course of the bridge the Minister, former Member, was all too well aware of the issues surrounding costs on the bridge and we’re not going to elaborate there. I guess people need to understand and want some comfort in knowing that the end of the costs with respect to the structure. So I was hoping the Minister could just take a few minutes, or his designate, to maybe reassure the general populous here that we’re not going to be incurring a lot more costs in the structure that’s maybe not seen in this capital presentation. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I certainly appreciate the Member’s question. We didn’t provide a dollar amount during my Minister’s statement earlier today. The amount is to roughly 5 percent of the total project cost.

It is my responsibility and the department’s responsibility to move the project forward with an eye to minimize any further costs associated with the project. There are some issues that may come up that are out of our control, but certainly anything under our control and guidance, like I said, costs are going to be closely looked at, and I can assure the Member that going forward we are going to do our best to minimize any potential financial risks to that project as it moves forward. I’m going to ask Mr. Neudorf if he’s got anything to add to that. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Ramsay. Mr. Neudorf.

Thank you, Mr. Neudorf. Mr. Dolynny.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So my understanding here from the delegation is that we’re seeing the usual costs coming forward. Again, I guess I’m hearing a little bit of we’re following due diligence and we’re crossing all of our t’s. Can the delegation or the Minister indicate is there anything on the horizon that residents should be prepared for in terms of additional costs that might be forthcoming?

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Looking forward, a potential would be in the area of claims. There are a number of claims both put forward on behalf of the government and the contractor as well. So in a project of this size there’s going to be claims from both sides and there is some potential there, but we’re going to work to ensure that our financial risk in this project is mitigated at every turn, or minimized at every turn. Thank you.

I guess for the sake of the residents of the Territories, we’re also hoping that we’re on budget with no more surprises until the opening of the bridge.

One of the last questions I have for the Minister or Mr. Neudorf is earlier today we talked about tolls and the fact that there would not be a toll at the bridge itself, but there would be a means and ways for calculating tolls for businesses. As most businesses are preparing their future business plans for the 2012 fiscal year, I think a lot of businesses would probably like to have some indication as to what kind of costs may be associated with doing those capital year plans and those common year plans. Can the Minister or Mr. Neudorf indicate exactly ranges in the tolls, and if so, will those tolls being made public for people to start doing those business plans?

Certainly having the Deh Cho Bridge opened will mean I’m not taking calls from local businesspeople when water levels or ice in the river causes the Merv Hardie ferry to be put on the sideline and unavailable. That causes businesses here in Yellowknife and other communities north of that river crossing hardship. It causes consumers hardship. If you even look back to I believe it was two years ago, there was a fuel shortage here in Yellowknife. Just recently there were many bare shelves in stores across Yellowknife. It’s going to be a thing of the past once the bridge is constructed.

There are tolls. They were, actually, in the Deh Cho Bridge Concession Agreement. I believe it was $6 per tonne originally. I think it’s up to $7 now, but Mr. Neudorf can give a little bit more detail on that. But

in terms of costs to trucking companies, I believe once you factor in the costs for tolls, the approximate value would be about $250 per B-Train. So I think that’s the number that I’ve learned, but I’ll go to Mr. Neudorf for some more information on the tolls.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Mr. Neudorf.

Thank you. Anything further, Mr. Dolynny?

Thank you, Madam Chair. No more further questions.

Thank you. For general comments I have Mr. Yakeleya and Mr. Bromley. Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Madam Chair. My comments would reflect around the Mackenzie Valley winter road, and the airports in my community, and some of the support equipment that needs to be looked at within the Department of Transportation to support the operations of our small airports and our winter road.

I want to thank the department at this time for their flexibility and support in the construction, the final steps of the Colville Lake new airport. The people there are very happy that the department was opening up to have most of the people and their equipment in Colville Lake working on the airport. It does a lot of good when you see high employment in Colville Lake. Actually, they had a pretty good crew there. They’re very open. I want to ask the Minister when they put together infrastructure such

as the one like Colville Lake, they also need to put in support infrastructure such as the terminal. Right now you go to Colville Lake, you land at the airport, and there’s no place to walk into. It’s just right open. You have very good scenery, but it’s cold. I’m hoping that the Colville Lake Airport will look at a shelter but also someplace where they would park their equipment, like a garage at their terminal for their equipment.

I spoke about Deline’s need for a snow blower. I will continue to raise it until Deline does see a snow blower at that community. I understand that today they are contracting a grader to do the runway. The graders are fine. The graders also do damage to the runways. They have been looking for a snow blower for some time with the amount of usage of that airport, so I’m going to continue to push for that community to look at a time when they can get a snow blower.

One of the things that the community of Deline have asked for in airports is the extension of that runway. I know it was extended. They want to land larger aircraft and I believe that Deline will be busy in the future. They are willing to work with the department. I wanted to say that the department’s not new to this initiative. They have made some concessions where the previous extension on the runway was supported through Deline through the gravelling material. They are looking for a runway extension in Deline.

The highways in the Mackenzie Valley winter road, as the Minister and the previous Minister have noted, a number of bridges have been put in to support the Mackenzie Valley Highway. However, there is a bridge in the Norman Wells section between Norman Wells and Fort Good Hope and the department’s well aware of the bridge. It’s at Oscar Creek and has been sitting there for a bit. It’s out of alignment. It causes some hiccups and difficulties for the department, this bridge here. It’s quite a scene when you drive on the winter road and come around a corner and you see a bridge sitting there all by itself not being used, and you kind of wonder what the heck’s going on here, why this bridge is not being used. There are a lot of stories around Norman Wells about this bridge. I look forward to when the government can put this bridge into use and get it in service.

There were two bridges that we were working on last year. The Prohibition Creek Bridge and the Four Mile Creek Bridge. I look forward to the Minister’s response on updates as to when those bridges will be fixed and in use.

The big one I want to talk about is the Bear River Bridge. This is the key infrastructure, especially now that the oil and gas companies have expressed interest in the Tulita/Norman Wells area for oil and gas exploration. This bridge here will be a support to exploration, opening winter roads

quicker, not putting people’s lives in jeopardy by continuing to use the winter ice road. Climate change, as my colleague Mr. Bromley has talked lots about, the impacts of climate change we are now seeing the effects on our winter road. The Bear River Bridge is something that I continue to support and the people in the Sahtu support to have that bridge up and on the books so that we can start to put that infrastructure in place.

I also look to the department on bringing types of infrastructure to our airports in Tulita for a garage. We have an old garage that right now I believe is contracted to the hamlet for the winter upgrades. They have the old federal government garages that now belong to the Hamlet of Tulita, no different than the garages that were used at the Yellowknife Airport. Now they have a brand new garage up at the Yellowknife Airport. We need that type of support also in our smaller communities.

I look for those types of updates. The Minister is pretty busy with all the other projects going on. However, these are the needs of the Sahtu people. I look forward to a discussion on the additional dollars that the Minister will be seeking for the Deh Cho Bridge and I look forward to some of his responses to my questions specifically on the Deh Cho Bridge.

I wanted to say these are my comments on the Department of Transportation.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I thank Mr. Yakeleya for bringing the concerns from the Sahtu forward. I made a list. I’ll try to go through them, Mr. Yakeleya, and if I miss anything, perhaps Mr. Neudorf can fill in the gaps if I missed a comment of yours.

Going back to the beginning with Colville Lake, we are committed to working with the community there in Colville Lake to get a passenger shelter up and running. I know the new airport is a little further away so that’s important that that happen. In terms of a garage or a structure being built for equipment, and I guess the same answer would apply to Tulita, DOT contracts the equipment from the community. It’s community equipment and they would have to look at housing that equipment. We haven’t got any plans currently to build a garage at either Colville Lake or Tulita.

The next issue the Member had was runway extensions in Deline. Going back to a 2007 study, I had indicated that the runway length in the community of Deline was adequate. Again, we’re committed to continue to work with the communities in the Sahtu and if there are proposals put forward – I believe we did an extension in Fort Good Hope where the community was involved in that

extension – then that’s something we could take under consideration as well.

The Member also spoke about the Oscar Creek Bridge. There’s currently a study underway to engage engineers to see what the best utilization of that bridge could be. We’re looking forward to at some point in time utilizing that piece of infrastructure that’s there at Oscar Creek.

I think that covered the issues the Member had. Oh, the snow blower. The issue the Member had with the snow blower. Currently we deploy graders at the airport. A grader is multifunctional, as Members know, whereas a snow blower is an expensive piece of equipment that is one dimensional; it blows snow. So having graders there and the functionality of the graders is a better fit for the department.

Also the Bear River Bridge. I know this is a topic that’s of great interest to the Member and to the people of Tulita and the Sahtu. Obviously we’re going to be challenged with funding to carry out the work that we would like to see completed. I think going forward, with the level of activity in the Sahtu region, what is going to be happening there in the next few years in terms of seismic work and drilling programs, I think there will be more of an emphasis to get key pieces of infrastructure like the Bear River Bridge put into place. Obviously the completion of the Mackenzie Valley Highway is something that’s very important and the Bear River Bridge is a key piece of the completion of that highway project.

I certainly look forward to working with the Member over the coming years to ensure that the Sahtu region has their concerns answered.