Thank you, Mr. Chair. I agree with the Member. The contractors in the Sahtu that build the winter roads do a good job, a good job of maintaining it. Some years, depending on the volumes of snowfall largely determines some of the conditions. There is heavy snowfall at times, so the grading that is scheduled inside the contracts can’t keep up. On the other hand, sometimes there is a minimal amount of snowfall and that causes some of the road to be rough. We have to work with the conditions, do an estimate on what we think the standard is. We pretty well know. For example, last year people weren’t sure how much snow came. People said there wasn’t a lot of snow, but there was about 90 percent of what was normal in the NWT, so the other issues related to that were not directly because of snow volumes. That is an issue, but we had agreed, where we had talked to industry, and we have added some money to it and that we would also be looking to add money in our base in order to improve the winter road.
Oscar Creek is a long-standing issue. Right now we have the winter road running by it. Aside from the fact that it looks very odd, we are not using it and we are going around it. For sure, before there is any permanent highway built that bridge has to be
placed… Either the entry, the ramps up to the bridge have to be built or the bridge has to be moved, one of the two. We are looking at that. We have recently drove by it and the department sent us some pictures to take a look at it from the air to see all the water that’s around that area, so you get a feel for what type of work would be needed on that bridge once we have to move it and place it in a permanent place.
The ATB in Deline is something that we will be working on this summer. There is going to be an expansion to that. It is very small, and for a community of 650 to 700, they have a very small building and we recognize that. In fact, sometimes there are three flights in there if there’s a charter or something and it gets pretty crowded there. We recognize that so we will be doing some work on that.
On the dredging, when we wrote a letter to address the issues around Hay River, it also included all of the waterway that would need dredging. The comments that we made to the federal Minister was about the whole Mackenzie River. So that’s something we are hoping we are going to get engaged with the federal government on in the near future.
The Mackenzie Valley Highway, Canyon Creek, we’re seeing the first bit of money coming from CanNor. We are very close to getting that money from the federal government, not the full amount for the project, which is a $22 million project, but an amount to get started and do the planning on it.
There is a lot of discussion in the community of Tulita plus Norman Wells, plus anybody who I think wants the Mackenzie Valley built from Wrigley to Norman Wells, a priority might be a Bear River Bridge. It seemed to be something that was very valuable for the actual construction of the highway itself. There is access to a gravel pit on the other side of the river where there was very little access, or I think the access was about 40 kilometres away from Tulita going south. Whereas, if the bridge was in first when the construction started, if and when the construction of the Mackenzie Valley started, it appears as though Bear River Bridge may be something we want to do soon in the project as opposed to later on in the project. That’s something that we recognize.
Access Roads Program – thank you, Member – it’s a very valuable program. It goes into the small communities. A few years ago we had some of the members of the Rural and Remote Communities, which most of the Members from the small communities sit on, had that increased to $1 million per year and we have maintained that.
On the road licensing, it is a very tough one to deal with. You have people wishing to have a standard Class 5 licence in the small communities. For the department, we can go in there and do a restricted
licence because there is no traffic volume in these communities, so it’s like giving someone a licence when you haven’t tested them in traffic. One of the things we are asking is when individuals come to Yellowknife, is to get a licence, because without being tested in traffic… With a regular Class 5 licence you can drive anywhere in the country, anywhere in the world actually. So, to put somebody that’s got a driver’s licence where they went through the whole test without encountering any traffic lights, any volume of traffic at all and then sending them down to Edmonton and putting them behind the wheel would not be something that the department wishes to do and would not be a wise thing to do. What we need to do is we need to get the people tested in Yellowknife, if possible, and if there is a way to do the training anywhere, like we have talked with some Members about doing it at the school to get all the basics there, giving them an increased chance of success when they do run the standard test in Yellowknife, Hay River, Fort Smith, or Inuvik, for that matter. We also issue full licences there. I think in Simpson as well. We like to stay with that because we think that anything else will be unsafe. If we find a safe way where we can issue those licences, then that’s what we’ll do. Thank you.