Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The territorial government and this Assembly have committed to a broad range of infrastructure development, and I agree with the Member that Stanton is our flagship when it comes to acute care. We’ve started the process, it’s been some time in the making, we’ve dealt with a lot of issues on an ongoing fashion, but we are now fully committed to engage in a process that will see an investment of at least $200 million to do a much needed midlife retrofit and the capital plan is coming forward. The Minister of Health and the Minister of Public Works, sitting to my immediate right here, are listening carefully to the discussion here today. As we come forward with the capital plan, it will reflect the importance of this project. Thank you.

Thank you. Thanks to our fiscal procrastination we are now passing the point of completing a half-life retrofit on this asset.

The Minister of Finance commented publicly that we need to spend $200 to avoid replacing the hospital for $500 million, but I’m sure everyone here will agree that’s very much lowballing the estimate of these costs. Many suspect our procrastinated

renovation may be pushing toward 300 and 400 million dollars in the billable amount, the longer we wait and current proposals are again nickel and diming. You’re stretching this out over decades, despite the Minister’s commitments.

So does the Minister agree that in the interests of both better patient care and wise fiscal management, we need to accelerate planning and implementation on this project starting in the next capital budget?

Thank you. We agree that this is our flagship, it’s a critical piece of health infrastructure. We’re laying out a plan that’s going to allow us to do much needed renovations and, at the same time, keep the operation in Stanton, for the most part, functioning and providing service, which is another critical piece that will add a time and complexity to the completion of the project. But, yes, we agree with the Member that we’d like to get this thing fully in the pipeline as fast as we can without compromising patient safety, and get this much needed project on the road to completion. Thank you.

Thank you. A strange kind of priority when we’re spending hundreds of millions of dollars on other projects and dragging this out over the decades. Because this is an operating and jam-packed hospital, carrying out the renovation during hospital hours will be difficult.

Does the Minister anticipate any extraordinary costs resulting from having to refer patients to southern institutions when wards, operating theatres, clinics, diagnostic and other facilities are closed for renovation? Mahsi.

Thank you. It clearly makes good management sense as we look at the scope of this project, and trying to maintain services as well as complete a major renovation and upgrade, that we have to look at other places, backups for services on a temporary basis, that we may have additional pressure on our medical travel and such. But that will be part of the planning and one of the reasons it’s taking time to get this project to the state that it is.

Once again, we agree with the Member that once we move down the path past the planning, once we get into this, the intent is to try to get it done as quickly as possible, but as well done as possible. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I agree with the Minister. We want to do this properly, we want to do it quickly, and we want to do is safely. How can we do that when we’re nickel and diming this project?

As we have been talking about, we’re talking about a fairly substantial number, a number that, at the end of the day, will exceed the cost of the bridge. We’re talking $200 million, possibly greater, to do this. We’ve committed the resources. It’s in the capital plan. The money has started to flow. We’re going to try to make sure the steps proceed in as timely a way as possible without compromising patient safety and efficiency, and making sure we can manage to run the hospital as we renovate around it.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. David Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The trip that we envision in April to southeast Saskatchewan and to North Dakota would be to meet with Aboriginal leaders. I would certainly hope to have some Aboriginal leaders from the Sahtu accompany me on that trip so that we can meet with them there to see how Aboriginal people in the Bakken have benefited from development on their land. That is something that we certainly look forward to and I certainly hope the Member can make some time in April to come with us.

I’ll have to check my schedule and get back to the Minister on that. I certainly would like to go with the Minister to the Bakken field.

I want to ask the Minister, with the government’s increased budget for programs and services, and that’s one of ITI’s mandates, I want to ask the Minister how his department coordinates activities with other departments since the oil companies said the oil plays in the Sahtu are encouraging and they want to further develop those areas.

The Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment has some very good staff in the Sahtu. We’ve also modified the pipeline office in Hay River, it’s the Mackenzie Valley Petroleum Planning Office now. They do work now for and on behalf of what is happening in the Sahtu.

We’ve had the Sahtu Readiness Session that we were able to attend last fall. I have made a commitment to the Member that we will look at doing an exercise like that again this coming fall to get ready for what is happening so community leaders, business leaders and industry can get together in one room and try to understand exactly what is going to happen there next winter.

In discussions with the Member earlier during this session, the use of the winter road, how it’s been utilized this winter, how we’ve partnered with industry, how we can improve on this for next year, I think that’s also very important that a post-mortem on how the winter road operation happened this winter and improvements that can be made next winter. I think those are very useful dialogues to have and we look forward to helping put that together both with ITI and DOT.

In the Sahtu exploration readiness session, a lot of good things were talked about. One of the things that concerned me is there was no lead identified during the readiness session to work on the addictions and mental health issues. I want to know how ITI is addressing that within the Government of the Northwest Territories. We have a plan in place with Sahtu, we just don’t have the money.

My role as Minister of ITI when we attend a session like the Sahtu Readiness Session, is to take the information back to the Cabinet table and make my colleagues aware of what is happening in the Sahtu. After what happened last winter, Cabinet got together, there was a response to that and you can see that response in this year’s budget.

As things continue to move forward in the Sahtu, government will need to respond, whether it’s through Education, Health and Social Services or ITI. Government will have to react and respond to what is happening there. We certainly look forward to things continuing to move forward there. This is something that we’re very excited about.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Final supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In this project in this work in the Sahtu, ITI has taken the lead on oil and gas development and is coordinating with all the other departments. ITI is the boss here. I want to ask ITI, is he working with the other departments, with the Sahtu leadership, with the Aboriginal leadership to create the

economic Oil and Gas Strategy for the Sahtu? Because this is a great potential that the oil companies are telling us that they have encouraging results that would make it one of the most powerful economic drivers in Canada.

We do continue to work together and, I think, that’s how we are going to see the play that is taking place in the central Mackenzie in the Sahtu. We’re going to see it move forward because, again, that dialogue has taken place and will continue to take place between government, industry, business leaders and Aboriginal leaders in the region. That is the only way that we can move forward.

The Member said he is walking a line and we do have to walk that line. There has to be a balance on protecting the environment and development. We believe that by working together, we are going to achieve some very good results there.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Member for Hay River North, Mr. Bouchard.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the days get longer, everyone is considering their growing season, agriculture. I’ll follow up with my colleague’s questions for the Minister of ITI on agriculture.

The first question I want to follow up on is the question on the training course for the northern farmer training. Has the Minister committed to doing anything for the upcoming year in this area of training farmers?

Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. The honourable Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. David Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I mentioned in response to Mrs. Groenewegen’s questions earlier, we have met with the TFA. We are aware of the training that they are proposing. We plan to meet with them again next week in Yellowknife. We are hoping to conclude negotiations on the Growing Forward Fund by the end of this fiscal year, another four weeks or so, at which time, I do believe, we’ll be able to provide some assistance and help in order to see this farmer training taking place in Hay River. We are very hopeful that it will happen.

I’m wondering if the Minister and his department have had any discussions outside of the Hay River area as far as bringing people from the Northwest Territories. I know there’s some agriculture happening in Norman Wells and Inuvik. Is there some interest in bringing people in from the communities for this type of training?