Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Four years ago we were elected to this House. One of the first statements I made was about dredging of the Hay River and the requirement for this. This issue has been before this Assembly for more than a decade to look at Hay River dredging, and our government
continues
to
ignore
that.
Our
government
keeps
saying,
federally it’s a
responsibility. Again, the Premier makes a statement about key infrastructure today, and he talks about a whole bunch of different highways, a whole bunch of road construction, which is also supposed to be a federal responsibility.
I’m getting very frustrated and it’s very difficult to even speak in this House without getting called on a point of order on the language that I want to use.
This has become a crisis for the community of Hay River. We have veteran fishermen who are not going on the water because it’s unsafe in the springtime to go there. Until the bigger ships take some of the sediment down, they’re not willing to go out on the wa
ter. They’re not creating a livelihood there.
We know that the hub of the North is Hay River. We know that this is key to the Northwest Territories to resupplying a whole bunch of the communities in the Northwest Territories. How can our government sit here for four years, for decades and ignore that concern?
We have all kinds of discussion about major infrastructure here and the dredging in Hay River is ignored. I’ve asked this Minister several times, along with the federal government, to deal with the dredging. I understand millions of dollars are the issue, but we write a $12 million cheque when we have a cost overrun on a project, no problem. We need $12 million for a key piece of infrastructure like the Hay River and we ignore it for more than a decade.
It’s ludicrous that we haven’t dealt with this problem. We’ve been dealing with the Town of Hay River, with NTCL, the shipping company there. They’re interested in being partners, but the GNWT is not interested in being partners. They want to just ignore it and tell us it’s a federal responsibility. Our government needs to take responsibility for dredging in the Hay River area.