Thank you, Madam Chair. Like my colleagues, I am fairly supportive of the projects that are in the capital budget. It’s probably one of our lighter budgets, but I do have some concerns in the area of timelines, in the areas of highways and buildings being constructed and the fact that the government has decided to look at these in the fall time in order to be able to put them into operation in the summertime. Somewhere down the road, no pun intended, these are getting farther and farther down the line so we’re beginning projects in July and August and getting into the rainy seasons in
the August-September time. I do have some concerns with timelines.
I think another thing that some people have mentioned that is not in the budget is the Tuk to Inuvik highway. I think we need to keep moving this project forward and at least assessing, getting the assessment completed and see what the next level of funding requirement is, and at some point deciding how far in we are. It is something that is an integral part of economic development in that region, so we need to continue to move forward on it.
The capital budget also discusses the infrastructure money or the deferred maintenance money. It’s good to see that the numbers are going down but I don’t know if the department really has any kind of plan to get rid of deferred maintenance or is this just an anomaly year where it’s reduced and other years we’re going to increase. My concern with deferred maintenance was brought up last year when I first became an MLA. If it’s deferred maintenance and we just continue to be behind on it, then you might as well just rename it as regular maintenance because now we’re just way behind. Deferred means, in my opinion, that we’re actually going to crawl out of this hole that we’re in, and I don’t know if the government really has a plan to do that.
The other area in the capital budget process is the consultation with the communities, the public consultation. I understand some of these two have links together where there’s capital, where there’s O and M, but I think it is interesting to go to the communities and hear their voices, but I think time-wise it should also include the MLAs. I happened to have the opportunity to go into my community, but most MLAs didn’t.
I think that’s all my comments for right now. Thank you very much.