Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In follow-up to my colleague’s from Hay River North statement on the necessity of this government to invest money in upkeep on our roads and our winter roads, I would just like to say that Hay River is a place where at this time of year we see a lot of visitors from the North that do come in on the winter road. It’s a very narrow window, and it is dictated a lot of times by the weather on a year-to-year basis. But it’s very nice when we see people pull into town from Fort Good Hope and Tulita and Colville Lake and the people taking advantage of that winter road.

The Hay River businesses very much appreciate them not continuing south, or turning north at the junction and coming here to Yellowknife. They come to Hay River to pick up vehicles, have vehicles serviced, pick up parts for their snow machines, to get resupplied for their groceries and their goods that they need for the year, and that is a very, very important piece of infrastructure for people who for the rest of the year do not have any means of driving out of their communities, and it is a narrow window.

As Mr. Bouchard said, if we have a bad fire season, we find the money. But if we have a bad winter road season, we sometimes go, oh well, let’s just close it down. I think that we need to really think about that.

This weekend we’ll see lots of folks coming in on all-weather roads and winter roads to the Kamba Carnival. It’s a great opportunity for families and friends to get together. March is carnival season and so we, again, will welcome many visitors to our community. Again, I just want to say how much we appreciate their support for Hay River, for Hay River businesses and for coming to our community. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Item 4, returns to oral questions. Item 5, recognition of visitors in the gallery, Mr. Lafferty.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Mr. Yakeleya.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to also recognize two Pages from Deline: Faith Gaudet, whose father is Danny Gaudet – it’s going to be a historical day for the Pages – and also Hanna Beyonnie, all the way back there, from Deline. Their paging today is ironic. It’s a coincidence that they’re paging at our Assembly this week. Also, some of the guests from the Sahtu are here. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. I’d like to welcome everyone here in the public gallery. Thank you for taking an interest in our proceedings.

Item 6, acknowledgements. Item 7, oral questions. Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is to the Minister of MACA with regards to the idea or concept for a centre of excellence for athletes. I know we talked about this just this last week, looking at if this is an idea that’s floating around in his department to look at where there is raw talent in the communities in the North that can come together and start looking at what it will take to have a sports centre for these young people to come and excel, so that they can go either into the national or international arena and win some medals for the Northwest Territories.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs, Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. One of our sporting partners, Sport North, has put a business plan together for a proposed centre of sports excellence. We’re just in the process of reviewing that plan and we’ll try to work with our partners on the way forward.

I look forward to that business plan. That’s good news for this side of the table here.

I also want to ask the Minister, is there any thought to inviting some of the people in our small communities to have a discussion? Some of the discussions they had this morning with the Minister, some of our teachers in our small communities really contribute to sports in the communities. Deline has survived there for hockey. In Inuvik they had Ms. Peggy Curtis for badminton. Different teachers have played a big role in the lives in the small communities.

Do we have that type of avenue where these teachers or people in the communities could also be of assistance in developing some of this business case here?

Mr. Speaker, the Member raises a very good point. A lot of the teachers that have gone through the communities in years past have contributed a lot to sporting development in the communities. I think we see it in the different communities around. One community might be good in basketball because they have a basketball coach there. So, they’ve contributed a lot.

We recently had a sport forum with many of our sporting partners, and we plan on having another gathering of our sporting partners. There are always ways through them that all those who are serving the communities can contribute to the process. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Part of this discussion that I’m alluding to would be the wellness of these young athletes. I just had a really good discussion up in the Explorer Hotel with a lot of really exciting people putting together some good wellness packages.

I want to ask the Minister also on the health and wellness of this concept. Is that part of the discussion of a business plan on the centre of excellence for young athletes? Are we looking at a comprehensive model such as this one here?

This government contributes a lot to the health and well-being of our young people across the Northwest Territories. I think we have upwards of $3.6 million that we provide to many programs that affect the communities. Again, I haven’t had an opportunity to review the business plan yet. I’m just in that process right now. Once we review that and see if there’s a way moving forward, it will obviously take into account a lot of things if they do have a centre of excellence for sport development, nutrition and health and well-being. But first and foremost, our goal as a government is to contribute to the health and well-being and keep our young people across the Northwest Territories active.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The Member for Hay River North, Mr. Bouchard.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today will be for the Minister of Transportation. I know the Minister, before Christmas, got an opportunity to go on the winter roads. I’m glad that he went early, because from what I’m hearing the roads are in rougher shape now than they were back then.

My first question is does the Department of Transportation have a fixed budget on winter road construction and maintenance?

Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. The Minister of Transportation, Mr. Beaulieu.

Yes, Mr. Speaker, we do. At about five-year blocks we tender the winter road construction in several zones. We have seven zones and each zone could be divided up into two zones, or sometimes it’s just one zone. Then we determine right from Wrigley all the way to Colville Lake who would do what and we tender the work. We issue the work based on tender and a schedule that the contractor has to follow.

The next question I have is how does the department know that there’s going to be a set amount? If there are 10 snowstorms versus 15 snowstorms in a year or whether we have no snow in one area or lots of snow, how does the department set that as a fix? Does the department ever come back to the Assembly for additional funds to improve the maintenance on those highways?

We do a best guesstimate we can to determine how many times the passes would be needed by the equipment on the winter road. We also have a lot of historical data, and we use those recognizing that, of course, in the past we’ve also had some support from industry that is no longer there.

I did hear that comment from the Minister in the media a while ago about the lack of industry support this year, but this government has been around for a long time, and I know industry is not there that much this year in the Sahtu especially, so they haven’t been beating up the road as much. But the roads are in terrible shape right now.

Is the Minister looking to put more money and more cycles into the maintenance of the highways?

We are going to take a serious look at the possibility of adding more cycles. Although the industry didn’t support us to the full magnitude that they’ve assisted us in the past, we did get some money from industry. Actually, $140,000 to help us with some of the heavy traffic that they were hoping to bring over the winter roads. We’ve had a lot of complaints about the winter road from industry, people moving some fuel and so on into the communities, and from the general population and from the Sahtu, so we are actually seriously considering requesting some money for the winter road in the Sahtu.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bouchard.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I know the Minister has been getting these reports. I’ve been getting some of the reports on there. Industry has been keen on letting them know where the maintenance needs to be done. I know in the next little while we’re going to be looking at supplementary expenditures. The roads are melting. The weather is going to be starting to warm up here. We know there is going to be more pressure.

When will the Minister give us some indication that they’re going to increase the cycles and look for money in maintenance?

We don’t anticipate any issues with getting everything that we need into the Sahtu communities with the current state of the winter roads. What we would like to do is, really, use this year where we recognize that we didn’t get industry support as a bit of a prototype year on what happened, what occurred and so on. Then next year look at what we think we need, how we need additional cycles and so on in the Sahtu. By additional cycles I mean the extra grading that’s going to be required on the snowfalls in the Sahtu. Thank you.