Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Recently, the Member and I spoke to the mayor of Aklavik on the Willow River Bridge. Three-quarters of the bridge is in Inuvik and a quarter of that bridge is still sitting in Fort St. John. The plan is, of course, to bring that bridge and place it over the river, bridge the river with it. That’s what we’re hoping to do and that’s what the community wants to do to have that access road to the gravel source.
Right now, since we’ve had the discussion, our people in the Beaufort-Delta, DOT people have been talking to the community and we’re finding we’re getting more… Right now we kind of have a verbal idea from them on what is needed, so we’re just trying to get the written proposal right now. Once we’re able to get that, we’re… I mean, we want to fund that. We bought the bridge so we want to be able to put it in. It’s something we all want to do.
The Tsiigehtchic ferry or the ferry that crosses at Tsiigehtchic was actually faster in the wintertime because it didn’t have to stop in Tsiigehtchic. It just went straight across. It was a straight line across, so it did go across faster. So that’s true.
On the Dempster Highway, it was a shame that there was no capital available this past summer, but we’re hoping to get going again this summer. We’ve put in our supplementary portion, our GNWT portion, supplementary appropriation from the Building Canada and GNWT money together for the
work on the Dempster. What we’re thinking is that it’s going to be about $4 million to $4.5 million, most likely $4.5 million worth of work in there each summer. In this first package that we presented, the first bundle, I guess, we presented to the federal government was for four years.
We wanted to make sure that our proposal was successful at the federal level. We felt that putting a proposal in from Wrigley to Norman Wells, we had the greatest change of success than putting something in that went all the way to the Dempster, or even, for that matter, a proposal that went to Fort Good Hope, because to Norman Wells alone was a $700 million proposal and that $700 million proposal is not approved yet. We imagine that if we had put a $2 billion proposal in front of the federal government asking for a highway to be built to connect to the Dempster, it would be even longer in the approval process. We know that we have to start building the Mackenzie Valley Highway somewhere, and we felt that… This was a decision that was taken to Cabinet and it was felt that our best chance of success would be to take the highway from Wrigley to Norman Wells. That’s why that proposal is in. Of course, we all want to see the Mackenzie Valley Highway join the Dempster in the future. That’s something that would be very positive for the whole North.
The ferry contract, we are in the middle of determining a new relationship with people that are going to run the ferry. Right now the contract is due. We’ve had some discussion, our people in Inuvik have had some discussion with a Gwich’in organization. I’ve had some discussion with local organizations in both McPherson and Tsiigehtchic. We have had some discussion with Grizzly Marine, an individual company that is currently running the ferry for us. They have moved their manager to Fort McPherson, so that is something, trying to move some of the manager positions out of Inuvik and closer to where the action is. We are continuing with that, those negotiations, and we will keep the Member informed as we get closer to signing a new contract.
With the members on the other side of the Arctic Red River that are enduring some flooding problems, I would like to have the deputy minister respond to give some background. Thank you.