Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The inconsistency, as the Member referred to it, of the work that’s been done on Highway No. 6, Highway No. 5, Highway No. 7, Highway No. 1, is we are following the flow of the money. We had some BCP money that expired. We had some and those highways didn’t have some money. But Highway No. 6, we think we have the money now to complete it to chipseal state. Highway No. 5, we have to deal with the federal government, Parks Canada, because Highway No. 5 runs through Wood Buffalo National Park. So we’ve been having discussions with the federal people about their infrastructure and we recognize that federal parks did get some infrastructure money for their infrastructure. They consider that highway to be a part of the infrastructure. It was ineligible for the Building Canada Plan. So we’re dealing with that issue.

Highway No. 7 is a highway that was built essentially by students in the early to mid-‘70s and it was mostly designed to train heavy equipment operators and truck drivers and it doesn’t have a real solid base, so we recognize that we have to upgrade sections of that road. We’ve done a considerable amount of work on that highway from Liard to the border and then we’re planning on doing some more work from Liard this way. I don’t know the exact distance, or to kilometre 130, which again, I guess, would be about 90 kilometres from Liard.

So we’re going to concentrate on that 90 kilometres. Out of Liard seems to be the worst of that highway. Meanwhile we’re also continuing to maintain that highway; we have a maintenance contract on it. We’re doing road right-of-way work on that highway.

Highway No. 1, we are chipsealing portions of Highway No. 1. We’ve had a discussion with Jean Marie River, as an example, when we were in there and they were looking to get about… I believe they’d indicated to us 30 kilometres and it will take them all the way to Simpson. So I believe that that’s in the plan this summer. So then from Jean Marie all the way into Simpson will now have chipseal. Then parts of the other part of Highway No. 1 from the junction that goes to Highway No. 3 junction near Fort Providence, 24 kilometres from Fort Providence, we’re starting to do chipseal between there and the Jean Marie River turnoff. So we’re continuing to work on that.

The Mackenzie Valley Highway versus the Slave Geological Province overland road to support industry, they’re two completely separate proposals. We’re moving forward. We have not slowed down the Mackenzie Valley Highway proposal at all. We’ve submitted the proposal to the federal government. The federal government still knows that that’s the only proposal we have in and that we are developing a business case. We’re close to completing that business case. It’s taking some work to put everything together. There’s a lot of information that the federal government wants in as far as the economic impacts and so on of the highway, so we’re looking at that.

Slave Geological, we have some money to put into that to do some studies. That is something that has been in the works for a long time. At the time Transportation was devolved, in 1989, that was already in the works that they wished to evolve some extension of the highway beyond Tibbitt.

Marine, I guess we could say it’s a federal responsibility. However, we’ve been saying it’s a federal responsibility for a long time, because it is, but we want to try to encourage the federal government to put some funds into dredging. We know there are about five areas that need dredging in order to have the whole waterway from Hay River all the way to Inuvik hauling at full capacity. We would have to dredge more than just the port of Hay River, but that seems to be the key spot. A lot of the federal government boats are not leaving the ferry without getting into some trouble. So I wrote a letter to the federal Minister last week to talk about the dredging.

Trucking regulations, our regulations are in place for safety of the residents of the Northwest Territories. Alberta has different regulations. They regulate their trucking industry, so they are doing the best they can for their citizens. We do the same. It has worked fairly well. There are a few glitches, as the Member indicates, but one of the recommendations was to identify which vehicles were commercial and which were not commercial, depending on what they’re hauling and so on. We don’t have the manpower to be able to determine

that. We’d have to stop everyone and check everyone to make sure they are not hauling for commercial reasons. So it is something we are looking at and saying that what we have in place is the best solution. That’s why we’ve developed those regulations. We didn’t develop regulations thinking they would have an adverse effect on our citizens, but rather for safety issues and also for our own infrastructure.

Central repair in Hay River is still central repair in Hay River. We do have an aging fleet, so a lot of the fleet that’s up here – and we do have a lot of equipment up here, so we do have repairs here – but for the most part the larger machinery still goes to Hay River. Thank you, Mr. Chair.