Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a few specific issues on transportation and I have one comment on the Deh Cho Bridge.
I want to go straight into the Sahtu concerns with the proposed funding here that we are looking at. The first one has to do with the O and M on the Bear River ice crossing at Deline. I received an e-
mail from the regional office in Fort Simpson and the ice crossing at Great Bear Lake is at 30,000 kilograms. Hopefully by the end of this day and further days to come, the weight category will go up to 45,000 kilograms within days.
My question to the Minister is that people in Deline also need to support themselves, the heavy equipment and construction companies that are there, and they certainly can’t put their heavy equipment to work because the weight limits are not safe and it’s not advisable for them to cross on the Great Bear Lake. I’m asking the Minister if there are any further types of machinery with your O and M that could be brought to Deline to increase their weight limits so that these heavy equipment machines can be used to work in the Tulita district, the oil and gas exploration. They are losing a lot of money in Deline.
The ice crossing at Great Bear Lake is a concern for the people, for the businesspeople there. They also looked at in the plans for future roads. They are looking at a route that would go around the lake so that would cut out a lot of concerns for the people. That is something that I want to raise with the Minister.
The other issue I want to raise with the Minister is a portable licence machine. Some of the communities such as Colville Lake do not have that type of service. They have to drive to Norman Wells in the wintertime, and that is about a six-hour drive, or in the summer they have to fly the machine, when available, to Colville Lake. People would like to see this portable machine being brought to the communities on specific times in the regulations as they require them to receive that service.
I was in Fort Good Hope in September and people were coming up to me and saying we need to get our licence updated or we need to get our vehicles registered, and there were some problems about having somebody come in from Norman Wells into Fort Good Hope. They couldn’t wait, so some of them actually had to fly to Norman Wells, get the licence, make an appointment, stay overnight and fly back. It cost them $300 or $400 to get their vehicle registered. I know the department made several attempts to try to get the people into Fort Good Hope. It just didn’t work. I want to see what the Minister can do to strengthen this service in our communities and see if within the department they could make that service more, how do you say, the community said the contract to do this is not very high and it costs them more, it costs them more to operate it, so more beneficial, I guess, to the organization that’s running the road licence program. That’s something that I want to add on to my concerns.
The third one is I want to ask the Minister if he would look at the operations of Transportation. I’ve raised it over a number of years that the Sahtu now
should be considered as a regional office. The winter roads and the highways come from the Fort Simpson regional office. The airports come from the Inuvik regional office. We have outside people dictating or have the authority within the region. I think we have done enough and I think it’s time that the Sahtu has its own regional office. I’m hoping that the Minister can look at this request to see if the Sahtu can begin to have more autonomy, moving away from the Simpson and Inuvik offices and have something in the Sahtu. Sahtu people have been telling me that they always have to wait for Inuvik or Fort Simpson to give the approval for something that’s happening right there, and it just doesn’t make sense anymore. That’s a strong request I have for the Minister and I will be following it up as we go on with the life of this government here.
My last matter for the Sahtu would be if the department can look at moving some of the personnel. The Minister and I had some private discussions on this and I’m not going to get too far into the details about moving some personnel people into the Sahtu. That makes sense where it can be more efficient, more effective. We have computers, we have a fax system and we have people on the ground that would start looking at our projects in the Sahtu. We are grateful for what we receive under Transportation. I want to ask if we could look at some type of initiative to transfer some of the personnel from headquarters into the Sahtu where it would make more sense to us. It may not make sense to the department, but it makes more sense in the Sahtu.
My last comment would be with the Deh Cho Bridge. I would like the Minister to, in the time that we have, look at some of the explanation of the interest payments that we are setting up and having with the Deh Cho Bridge project there. Those would be my comments.