Mr. Speaker, to date, the GNWT has spent $128 million on that section of road; we’re referring to a road up the Mackenzie Valley. Slowly we’ve continued to work on that. We’ve put quite a few of the bridges in. We’re continuing to put bridges in which not only will work well for the future all-season road but also works well for extending the length in which the winter road will remain open. Plus, like I indicated, a proposal to the federal government on the national infrastructure program.

With that, we will be providing some information to the federal government, but for the most part, we’re waiting for their blessing in order to proceed any further. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, the leadership and the people in the Sahtu sort of have an idea as to the progress to get full support to move in major steps on the Mackenzie Valley Highway. I want to ask the Minister if he’s committed to working with the Sahtu leadership in regard to seeking funding from other partnerships in place to start building the important highway as soon as possible. I know they talked about some of the work that could happen, so the leadership is looking for this government and this Minister to look at some possibilities that could be there that without even further investigating, so we need to look into that.

Can the Minister commit to looking into further areas that we can start to do some work in that area?

During our meeting with the leadership when we were meeting on the Mackenzie Valley road, the leadership had indicated to us that they were going to provide a proposal to us, a proposal that will be presented to the federal government and other departments in the federal government so that they can provide some funding through various avenues. One of the things that the leadership was very focused on was to try to access some quarries and that they wanted to build some of the road using some access money from the federal government and some money from the various other agencies and departments in order to begin and ensure that some of the contractors continue working.

One of the things they really wanted to do was something similar to what happened with the Inuvik-Tuk highway, was to try to get an access road to a gravel source near Norman Wells and one near Tulita. We talked about that with them.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.

Mr. Speaker, the leadership certainly, again, wanted to show its appreciation to Premier McLeod and the Cabinet Ministers for making themselves available to talk about some of these important issues.

The Inuvik region companies have a big role in the design and the construction of the Inuvik-Tuk highway and local residents and businesses are benefiting a lot from the construction.

Does the Minister support a similar approach for the Mackenzie Valley Highway to make sure that local companies and residents benefit from the future construction of this Mackenzie Valley Highway?

The Inuvik-Tuk highway is a design build highway. We are heavily involved in working with the joint venture up there, the EGT Northwind and in the construction of that highway. We think it’s a good approach. It’s a good approach for the Inuvik-Tuk highway. We would look at all of our procurement avenues when we build any major infrastructure like this.

At this time it would be unwise, I think, to say that we would go and negotiate a contract on that section of highway. We recognize that that highway will be running through two different regions. About 100 kilometres will be through the Deh Cho and about 233 kilometres will be running through the Sahtu. At this point, our priority is focused in on getting financing together and working with the federal government to pull the finances together, and the procurement of that will occur once the money is in place.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of Health and Social Services. I’d like to ask him, has the Department of Health and Social Services ever done a cost-benefit analysis on changing the residency requirement for health care coverage from six month resident per year to five months?

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The Minister of Health, Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Since I’ve become the Minister of Health and Social Services, I’ve actually had a number of constituents and other residents raise this particular issue with me, and I’ve already directed the department to begin the analysis. First, what are other jurisdictions doing, how many have moved from the 183 days to 153 days. But more importantly than just the number, how many of those are for out of province and how many of those for out of country. I’ve also asked the department to do a cost analysis on what this could bring or limit the Northwest Territories.

Given that we have a different way of collecting money in the Northwest Territories – TFF compared to how provinces raise their funds – we need to

verify that a change of residency won’t affect the TFF. I’ve directed the department to do the work, and once that analysis is done, I’m happy to bring it forward for discussion with Cabinet and committee.

Does the Minister know how long it’s going to take his department to do this homework and come up with a potential proposal to this change of this residency policy?

The staff that we have doing this is the same staff that are doing things like the medical travel review and a number of other things, so it’s a little down the list. They’ve started doing the work, but my direction to them was to complete the review, package it up so that I can explain it, and it can be explained to everybody within this fiscal year.

Could the Minister also please outline for us what exactly would be required for the government to implement a change in residency requirement for health care coverage? Would it require a legislative change or regulatory change? What would be required to make this change?

It would actually take a change to policy, we believe, at this time, but as I indicated, we need to make sure that any changes to policy or residency won’t affect the TFF and ultimately affect the finances that come to the Territories as a whole. From the perspective of Health and Social Services, it’s a policy change, but I’ll be able to confirm if it will affect anything else as we conduct a review and come back to committee and Cabinet.

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Final, short supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to ask the Minister if he’s contemplated how he might collect information, how he might survey people who would be in this category of wanting to spend time outside of the territory, whether it be in Canada somewhere else or in another country.

How would he be surveying, I guess, to quantify the number of people that such a policy might affect? He doesn’t need to send a survey to my house because I never go anywhere.

That’s actually incredibly difficult because they don’t have to self-identify that they’re travelling, but under the existing policy they don’t have to notify us anyway, and I don’t believe that would change. We don’t necessarily need to know the numbers. We just need to know that they are residents of the Territories for the allocated period of time. Our colleague Mr. Dolynny mentioned a report card that was recently conducted on snowbirds and travelling south. We have copies of that report and we’re using that information to help us do our research,

as well, and we will incorporate the areas that were identified in that for improvement where we scored a C, which is a pass, not a fail, but we certainly can do better in that area. We’re incorporating best practices. We’re incorporating reports. We’re incorporating information and we will come back to committee and Cabinet for further discussion.

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Blake.

Thank you, Mr. Blake. The Minister of Transportation, Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The funds were approved and we had presented a plan to the federal government and the plan was approved, but the money for the plan and how the money is going to roll out from the federal government has yet to be determined. Unfortunately, we are still in the process of negotiating when and how the money will flow. We don’t want to spend the money up front if that’s not the way the federal government is hoping to advance the money to us, so we’re going to talk to them and then determine exactly what is acceptable and when the money starts to flow, and then hopefully there might be something later this summer or maybe even earlier this summer, but at this time we haven’t gotten that final piece of how the money will flow through as yet. Thank you.

Thank you. I’d like to ask the Minister, is his department ready with their plans to follow through with the work on the Dempster Highway Project? Thank you.

Thank you. Yes, we are. It’s essentially the same plan that we’ve been running for seven years. It is a plan that’s worth $4 million a year for the last seven years that has been spent and we thought that it would just roll into this new Corridors for Canada III. However, there seems to be a one-year gap in between. We were hoping that didn’t exist, but yes, we will be continuing to widen the road moving forward with money that comes from the federal government. Thank you.

Thank you. Will the Minister expedite the Dempster widening project so that the work will happen this summer? Thank you.