Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just have a few comments and questions for the Minister. First off, I’d like to start with the Louis Cardinal extended operations. Great idea. We had some success this fall mostly due to the mild weather in October and the first part of November. We had an extra two weeks, I believe, from what is normally experienced up in Tsiigehtchic and the Mackenzie Delta. Really mild weather, so that really helped us out a lot on the extension of the operations. I know we had a lot of challenges after the ice froze in there, as expected. I did try to caution the department that maybe the Louis Cardinal was too small, but actually, at the end of the day it did do the job. It did take a lot longer than expected, but I think the department has learned from that.
One of the things I noticed was that the department changed the contractors halfway through, halfway across the river, and that really slowed things down probably by a week. I think that was a bad move and that actually, from my own opinion, because of the inexperienced operator, it really busted up the ferry. That’s just my own opinion. I’m sure the department has some answers for that.
The question I have is: In the spring, will the ferry be maintained back to its regular operation? I think we see the need to actually have the Merv Hardie moved down there in the near future. It could have been ready for operation this spring if we just maintained it over the summer. We had three or four months for crews to actually get the Merv Hardie back into shape over the summer. We had a few months there.
The other concern I had was with the Dempster Highway. It’s really noticeable that there needs to be an increase in the O and M funding to resurface the highway. Because it’s a gravel highway, with all the traffic, all the material that’s put on the road, because it isn’t packed in when it’s laid down, it just goes off to the sides, and there’s only so much the grader operators can do in the spring to pull it back up onto the road. It’s pretty clear that we need to resurface the highway and make sure that it’s actually packed down by packers when it’s been done and lay calcium down right away. That way you know it’s going to have a little structure.
Other than that, that’s about the only questions. I know there were concerns raised by the community of Tsiigehtchic to actually work on an air strip, with all the challenges during the spring and fall, but actually, this fall there was very little disruption in the services because of the access road that was built into the community. I think that’s still a good plan moving forward as an interim, and then moved back to the actual where the ice road has been for the last 20, 30 years. Those are the only comments I have.