This is page numbers 6559 – 6620 of the Hansard for the 17th Assembly, 5th Session. The original version can be accessed on the Legislative Assembly's website or by contacting the Legislative Assembly Library. The word of the day was know.

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Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters

Some Hon. Members

Agreed.

Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters

The Chair

The Chair Robert Bouchard

Thank you, Mr. Aumond. Sergeant-at-Arms, please escort the witness out of the Chamber. Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. I’ll go to Ms. Bisaro.

Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters

Wendy Bisaro

Wendy Bisaro Frame Lake

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Next in line is Health and Social Services. We would like to leave Health and go to the Department of Transportation.

Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters

The Chair

The Chair Robert Bouchard

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Mr. Bromley, sir.

Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters

Bob Bromley

Bob Bromley Weledeh

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move we report progress.

---Defeated

Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters

The Chair

The Chair Robert Bouchard

I’ll just confirm with

Mr. Beaulieu if you have w

itnesses and they’re

prepared to come into the Chamber.

Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters

Tom Beaulieu

Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I do.

Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters

The Chair

The Chair Robert Bouchard

Thank you. Sergeant- at-Arms, please escort in the witnesses.

Committee, we’re on page 81, Department of Transportation. I’ll go to general comments on the Department of Transportation. General comments. Mr. Blake.

Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters

Frederick Blake Jr.

Frederick Blake Jr. Mackenzie Delta

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m really glad

to see, as I mentioned, the Building Canada Plan underway once again. I am a little disappointed it wasn’t in place for last season, but here we are today, the first year that this funding is starting up again. Lots has been done, about three-quarters completed, and hopefully we have time, if the weather cooperates, that this gets finished and we have a parking garage upgrades in Aklavik. Hopefully, we can have this done as soon as possible. Within the month would be great.

---Laughter

But also under Willow River, as I mentioned before, it’s really important that the department identifies some funds to put this bridge in place. The contractors didn’t feel it would cost $2 million, but that price has come from the department under their assessment as to installing, drilling the pilings, which shouldn’t be very much to put this bridge in place. But with the help from the department and funding, I hope this bridge can be put in place this winter, otherwise it will be just sitting on the land as a possible injury that can happen with people travelling out on the

land in the winter not seeing this if it’s not

flagged properly. We don’t want any accidents happening.

Also, the Louis Cardinal hull upgrade, many of my constituents want to know when we are due for a new ferry. This ferry is well over 25, 30 years old now and it’s pretty clear it’s time for an upgrade. I’m sure with today’s technology there’s a far better way to provide this service.

With that, those are my general comments. Thank you.

Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters

The Chair

The Chair Robert Bouchard

Thank you, Mr. Blake. I’ll go to Minister Beaulieu.

Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters

Tom Beaulieu

Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The parking garage upgrade is scheduled to begin this year. There was some work done on the upgrade. Some of the money was spent on the parking upgrade.

The Willow River Bridge is part of the Access Roads Program. The Access Roads Program, as committee knows, is a program where there is just a little over $1 million and sometimes a little under $1 million spent in the program each year. So what we try to do with some of the projects is we try to support some of the programs in a larger way. This is one of the programs that we tried to support and we knew going in that it would be a substantial cost to put the bridge in.

There may be another way to do it where it would be less of a cost, but we knew it would be a fairly substantial cost to install a bridge. We don’t have the money in the Access Program. As I indicated in the House, if we intend to continue to finish this road and put the bridge in, then we would probably have to do it under regular capital where this actual project would be viewed as larger capital but just a slight issue with that. As we know, the system is if we’re going to spend some serious infrastructure money, it’s usually on our infrastructure contribution agreement, usually a

lot less and it’s not an asset

that we retain.

The Louis Cardinal Ferry is due for an upgrade, as the Member indicates. I’m just checking to see if this ferry is scheduled for replacement. My feeling is that it isn’t, that we wouldn’t be spending money on it to extend, we’d only be spending money on it to extend the life for a little while until we did find some capital dollars or replace it with another asset that we already have. Currently, we have money in for this year and this coming summer and we will be coating the hull of the ferry and that’s what we have in front of us today. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters

Frederick Blake Jr.

Frederick Blake Jr. Mackenzie Delta

It sounds like we have a possible supplementary coming about here with the Willow River B

ridge. I’m just kidding.

The only other c

omment I wanted to make was I’m

really happy to see we’re starting to do some brushing along the highway that’s with the Building

Canada Plan funding, I believe. Some has been done just as you leave Inuvik to the airport, roughly 20 kilometres underway at the moment from Tsiigehtchic, 20 miles north towards Inuvik. This brushing is beginning here, which is great. Anywhere else you travel in the country, whether it’s leaving here from Yellowknife, you have almost 20 metres on each side cleared for your visibility. This isn’t the case up along the Dempster Highway, but I’m glad to see that this work is finally beginning. Very important because a lot of times we have some near misses. People almost hit moose or caribou and it’s…

Mr. Chair, is there a probl

em? As I said, it’s bad to

see, you know a couple of times, as I mentioned, people almost hit moose and caribou. You know, as we start with this brushing, my residents are very happy with it. In the years to come,

I can’t wait to see

the project completed all through the Dempster. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters

Tom Beaulieu

Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe

The brushing is something that we are doing under the separate contract from the Building Canada Plan. The Building Canada Plan will be the reconstruction of the Dempster Highway, Highway No. 8, and the brushing is the separate contract. We are trying to do it every couple of years if possible. There’s a lot of highway to be brushed and I’m noticing that most of the highways now are getting some brushing done. For safety reasons we want to continue to do, right away, brushing as much as possible. Thank you.

Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters

The Chair

The Chair Robert Bouchard

Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. Committee, we’re on general comments for Transportation. General comments. Mr. Menicoche.

Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters

Kevin A. Menicoche

Kevin A. Menicoche Nahendeh

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I do have other issues that I’ll address in the detail, but just overall this has been a significant week, beginning last week with the potential claims of the Inuvik-Tuk Highway there. My initial concern and my original concern was about should the claims be successful about taking away from other capital projects, especially in ’16-17, so I’d like to ask the Minister: how is the department and how is this government going to handle the potential claim, should it be accepted, especially when w

e’re talking

about capital items and transportation in ’16-17? You know, as MLAs we all fought pretty hard to take care of our constituency needs and I would say, for example, Highway No. 7. Just how would it impact, of that magnitude of $32 million, our future capital expenses as planned in this House, Mr. Chair? Thank you.

Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters

The Chair

The Chair Robert Bouchard

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Minister Beaulieu.

Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters

Tom Beaulieu

Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe

Thank

you,

Mr.

Chairman. The amount of capital in the Inuvik to Tuk Highway P

roject has not changed and we’re

proceeding with the capital that we’re requesting. If

there is a claims process, we would be going through a regular claims process and at that point where we are going through the regular claims process and at this point

we don’t know if there’s going to be a

requirement for us to request any money at all to continue the Inuvik-

Tuk Highway. It’s too early in the

process to determine whether that’s needed but, Mr. Chairman, I understand my support staff, from the deputy minister, will be arriving here in 10 minutes. Thank you.

Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters

September 30th, 2015

Kevin A. Menicoche

Kevin A. Menicoche Nahendeh

Well, all the more reason for the Minister to make a commitment that he won’t move any money from our future capital. Like I said, that’s a concern of mine and we all work hard as an Assembly, Members on this side of the House with Cabinet, and a couple of weeks ago when we went through the capital budget, we’ve come here, we’ve got a fairly good plan that everybody’s agreeable with, but the impact of $32 million I just sure don’t want to see it being amended or changed because there is a successful claim there.

I’d just like to ask the Minister one more time what are his thoughts about that movement forward. We try to get assurance in this House that nothing will be done throughout th

e election period, so I’d just like

to ask the Minister what are his thoughts about how long will a claims process take, commit not to do anything during the election period. Thank you.

Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters

The Chair

The Chair Robert Bouchard

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Excuse me. Just in the interest of getting the proper answer, we’ll take a 10-minute break until the support staff get here. Thank you very much. Sorry, Mr. Miltenberger.

Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters

Michael Miltenberger

Michael Miltenberger Thebacha

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Two things: that the commitment has already been made as the claim process runs its course that we would be keeping committee and Members apprised of that.

In regards to the concern of the Member for Nahendeh, whatever comes out of that will negatively impact the next budget. Clearly, we’re going to

agree to this budget. We’re going to go

ahead with that and the incoming Assembly will pick up all the pieces for everything, look at all the challenges. But this project and whatever comes out of that claims process will not be tacked on to the capital plan where all of a sudden we have to carve away projects. It will be part of the broad consideration as we do our business as an Assembly, those of us who are going to be back here. This is just to give the assurance to the Member that it’s not automatically $30 million off the next capital budget. You know, worst case scenario. The hope is, as Minister Beaulieu has indicated, that at the end of the day we may sort this out and handle it with the existing budget, and we will keep Members apprised of that,

but it won’t negatively affect

constituencies and other communities.

Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters

The Chair

The Chair Robert Bouchard

Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. We’ll just take a five minute break. Ms. Bisaro. Sorry.

Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters

Wendy Bisaro

Wendy Bisaro Frame Lake

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that we report progress.

---Defeated

Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters

The Chair

The Chair Robert Bouchard

We’ll carry on after a

five-minute break.

---SHORT RECESS

Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters

The Chair

The Chair Robert Bouchard

Committee, we’ll

resume general comments on the Department of Transportation.

We’re on page 81. We’ll come back to this page after we’re concluded the department. Page 82, Department

of

Transportation,

airports,

infrastructure investments, $1.201 million. Mr. Moses.

Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters

Alfred Moses

Alfred Moses Inuvik Boot Lake

Just on page 82 and talking about the airports, I know it is on the list and it’s something that I’ve brought up during general comments when we got started with the infrastructure process. I just wanted to ask the Minister, when do we expect to have an update on the work that’s being done for the runway, the survey work and all that information? When can we expect to get a report on that and make a decision? Also, just with the airport, as well, I know it is on the books to be replaced, the airport facility, and I’m just wondering what the plans are for that as well.