Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation, Member Bromley asked how long the contract was in place for. I had indicated earlier, but just a quick repeat, it is a 35-year deal at $200,000 per year with the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation and that was to provide some sort of tourism development, economic development or any type of thing that may have been lost with the fact that when the ferry was there, the traffic was stopping in Providence, coming and going. Now that the people know that they don’t have to, unless they need to gas up, many of them go straight through on their way south on their way to other communities in the south of the NWT. This money was put in there, too, for the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation to develop something in that area to try to attract people still into Providence that is being lost as a result of the bridge.
The MLA also spoke a bit about looking at a railroad for the Transportation Strategy. I recall from a couple of years ago the Member asking the department to take a look at this as part of the overall Transportation Strategy. I don’t believe we have done that yet. That is next year. Again, we would look at that in the multi-modal Transportation Strategy that we would take a look at the railroad, as well, the feasibility of that being part of the transportation system.
The next one I have is the Inuvik to Tuk highway cost. Again, this was Member Hawkins asking about maybe what type of cost controls are in place and why not spread the costs over a longer period of time. Again, we looked at trying to build the road as quickly as possible. We need to get that highway built. We looked at that highway and determined that considering that the highway could only be constructed during small periods during the year, that there is no summer construction because of access to that area then in the summertime they will be working on the parts of the road that they
have already constructed. This is a five-year project and we thought that was a fairly extended time, as well, and was as quickly as we could do it. Money flows in from the federal government. As the Members know, about two-thirds of the cost is coming from the federal government and they have cash flowed it over five years. We have matched our share into that same time period and we are hoping that the road can be built in five years. The thought of slowing it down and spreading it out over a longer period for employment purposes is something that was not a priority for us. Our priority was to build the road.
The YK Airport was brought up earlier by a Member. We have the program review office looking at our governance options. We’ve done several reviews of the airport and feasibility and what can be done to expand services, or the airport program to move to the other side of the airport and so on. Right now what is happening, the program review office is looking at all those reports and looking at if there is a better way to govern what is going on there, a better way, looking at options, looking at other governance options.
The cold weather testing that the Member spoke of is something that we actually have some involvement in. Recently, we have done some cold weather testing up here for helicopters, so that is something that we are looking at.
The strategy, again, some Members talked about briefings and updates, so again, I am going to have the deputy minister talk about the strategy, but I just have a couple of items here that I will speak on.
The Member was supportive of the on-line registration; we appreciate his support. As we expand, that is exactly our intention and that we need to expand and that is what we will be doing and trying to get as many things on-line as possible.
The Deh Cho Bridge has not increased the cost of living to a large part in the city, so we have had a consultant look at that aspect of the Deh Cho Bridge, whether or not it was adding costs to the city. We notice that there is no change in the cost of gasoline, that there was some, I think, a couple of times where some people may have transferred too much of the cost over and above what they were paying in tolls to some products that were being brought in. That was something that was addressed and the increased costs on items were minimal. Like, if a vehicle was hauling maybe 10 cars across and was paying $300, then that would be like $30 per car, as an example, and taking that cost would be the direct cost of the toll they transferred to the customer and would hardly be noticeable, an individual buying a $40,000 car that was being increased by $30.
Getting back to an update on the strategy, what the plan is moving forward, I will ask the deputy minister to finish off my response.