Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a few brief comments to the main estimates. I, too, like Mr. Menicoche, have a lot of concerns from the communities. For example, Tsiigehtchic is still in need of nursing and also policing. I was hoping to see something here with some promises from the Minister, but I have yet to see that.
On a positive note, there are a lot of great initiatives there that we can expect to see in the communities.
Also, there are a lot of concerns in the region for Highway No. 8, the Dempster Highway. This fall we had terrible conditions, really moist, a lot of rain. We
had some places where there was over a foot of mud on the road. A lot of people with small vehicles had a lot of problems, transmissions freezing up, couldn’t get into gear. The warranties wouldn’t cover that so people were stuck with a lot of costs this fall. Some were $600 to $1,000, but they had to pay it to get their trucks fixed. We have to do a lot more for the maintenance on our highways.
Another thing, there’s no work to be done on the Dempster widening project this coming summer. The people in my riding and also the Beaufort-Delta are really disappointed. We were doing a great job the last two years widening from the border to Inuvik. I know during the discussions on the Inuvik-Tuk highway, we had a talk with the Minister and the plan was to prepare to widen the Dempster Highway and prepare for increased traffic of tourists to the Beaufort Sea. Hopefully we will see what the federal budget is later today, but it is in reference to exactly what our portion will be. I’m very confident in the Conservative government. They have helped our territory a lot in the last couple of years that I’ve been part of this government. I’m really thankful for that. Moving forward, I hope we can increase the services. Our committee has made a lot of recommendations – hopefully we can implement those – just to increase the services we are providing now. We are doing a great job compared to other territories and provinces, especially in the southern part of Canada. When it comes to taking care of our elders and people of our territory, I think our people are very fortunate.
With that, those are my comments. Thank you.