Thank you, Mr. Blake. Minister of Transportation, Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There are several stages of approvals that we go through when we’re dealing with the Building Canada Fund. The next step is to take all of the money that we have over the next 10 years and put them into bundles under $100 million, and we had submitted our first bundle to the federal government and right now it’s going through a review. We feel it’s very close to being approved.

Because the bundles have negotiated contracts in them, it was important that the federal government ran it through the Treasury Board. What we’ve done is we’ve been providing information to Infrastructure Canada. In turn, they’re providing it to the Treasury Board. So, we’re at the very final stages. Our Minister of Infrastructure has been in contact with Infrastructure Canada and is also trying to assist us to move that approval along, but at this time we are expecting approval on June 4th , actually.

As I mentioned, with the weather we have in August and September, it’s really important that we begin this work in June and July.

Will the Minister ensure that future contracts be awarded at least by the end of May in the years to come? Thank you.

This bundle that we submitted is four years’ worth of projects. Next year it will be approved, so we would be able to go through the tender process a lot quicker. We have tendered in advance in anticipation of approvals from the federal government. So, at this point, as soon as the approvals come, we would be in a very good position to make the awards. As soon as we get approval we’ll make the awards. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I just want to follow up on my Member’s statement on the housing issues in the community of Wrigley. I’d like to ask the Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation what kind of follow up is being done from the results of the 2014 Community Housing Survey, which prove what my constituents are saying about the dismal state of housing in the community of Wrigley. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Minister of NWT Housing, Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We use the results of the survey to assist

us as we plan our capital budget going forward. We do recognize that there is a need in a lot of smaller communities, especially in the Member’s riding. There has been a reluctance in the past for them to welcome public housing into the community, but we’re seeing that attitude start to change now and they realize that the best way to house a lot of their residents is to go through the public housing portfolio. So we needed those numbers to assist us with our planning. Thank you.

I’m glad the Minister, during our last tour which he attended with me in Nahendeh, knows that people were in favour of public housing. What is the Minister doing to beef up the role in Nahendeh communities that will result in more public and even better housing? Thank you.

We have a number of programs to assist homeowners especially in upgrading some of their houses, and I think in the Member’s riding we’ve had some fairly good uptake on that. A lot of them do live in private homes.

We did hear from a number of the Member’s communities, when we did our tour, that they felt there was a need for public housing. We had a number of units that we had put there on speculation that we would have suitable clients for and that didn’t pan out. So our plan is to convert whatever units we have there into public housing.

Again, we will look at the numbers and plan it as we go forward to possibly adding more public housing into the communities because we see that’s the direction that they feel is the best direction to go at this moment. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Just specifically it’s for Wrigley, the needs of better stock of public housing.

I’d just like to ask the Minister going forward, what kind of plans does he have with the department in addressing the concerns out of Wrigley? Thank you.

In the next couple of seasons I believe we have a couple of affordable housing units that are going into Wrigley. We would have to go in there and do a complete survey as to what the inventory is like in there. I think we have maybe eight public housing units in the whole community of Wrigley and I think we’ve got a couple of affordable housing units.

So, again, we will have to use the numbers from the community survey in assisting us as we plan our capital budget going forward. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Even though there was a recent survey, I

really believe that Wrigley has got to be reassessed.

Just in general, I know that we increased our borrowing limit. I’d just like to know, is the Minister going to approach Cabinet and see if we can get additional money from our borrowing limit to help address infrastructure shortages in the community?

We’re always looking for opportunities to secure more money from not only our government. We’ve been very fortunate in the last couple of years that this government has stepped forward and I think we’ve put almost $20 million into affordable housing units to try and address some of the challenges we face in the small communities, and also this government has stepped up in providing, I think, an additional $1.2 million to try and offset some of the loss that we’re facing with Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s declining funding. This government has stepped up and, again, any opportunities we have, if there are any federal opportunities for more public housing money through the Affordable Housing Initiative in the past and the Public Housing Initiative, I think it was called, we try to find every opportunity we can to secure more money that we can put into housing across the Northwest Territories.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is correct; the federal government has made a commitment to remediate the area. They say it’s going to take five years. Sometimes they say one thing and it may take, in fact, longer than the five years that they’ve committed to. But the other issue here is we had wanted them to take the class 1 sites – there are four of them to be

remediated – but the fact remains that they have that entire stretch of 222 kilometres, one kilometre on either side of it. It’s a big area and it’s going to require a lot of work to remediate.

We continue to look at that as an opportunity to put in infrastructure. This summer we are going to be putting in a cable crossing at the Twitya River. I had the opportunity to travel with the Member into the area recently. We are making those investments.

We’ve also worked with local organizations on some willow clearing on the first 25 kilometres. That work, I believe, has been completed or will be complete soon.

We’re continuing to move forward, but again, one of the big hang-ups for us is the remediation that the feds have committed to on the Canol Trail itself.

Just for correction, it’s 222 miles. I want to let the Minister know.

The remediation sites that need to be cleaned up, I want to ask the Minister, is this part of the transfer of lands from the federal to the territorial in the context of the territorial government taking over these lands? Is the territorial government in discussion with the feds so that these lands then can be transferred over to the territorial government so the Sahtu Dene and Metis can own, manage, develop and run the Canol Heritage Doi T'oh Canyon Park?

The federal government excluded the transfer of the entire section of the Canol Heritage Trail – and the Member is correct; it is 222 miles, not kilometres – reserved for the Doi T’oh Territorial Park from the final Devolution Agreement. Subsurface rights were, however, transferred to the Commissioner of the Northwest Territories. The Government of the Northwest Territories can still apply for transfer of administrative authority from the federal government, and the Government of the Northwest Territories will be seeking to have the land transferred for the Doi T’oh Territorial Park before the end of this projected timeline of five years that I mentioned earlier.

The contaminated areas, if you look at the report, it’s pretty thick but it’s very, very interesting. Just on the pricing of the fuel, one of the statements in the report says if they were to do the project, in costing out the project, a barrel of oil would cost about $1,000. You know, the expense of doing business in that area.

I want to ask the Minister, given what we know from the remediation assessment and the contamination and work that’s been done on the 222 miles of that stretch and what happened in the 1940s as of today, does the Minister, does his department understand the enormous step that we’ve taken to protect our lands and also the enormous amount of energy and effort it will take to clean up these

specific sites along the Canol Heritage Trail? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you Mr. Yakeleya. Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The proposed park, of course, follows the now defunct Canol Pipeline built during World War II, of course. It includes several waste sites with abandoned buildings. I know the Member and I have toured some of those abandoned buildings, equipment and vehicles interlinked with an old roadway. These sites present hazards to human and animal health, including oil spills, exposed asbestos, structurally unsafe buildings as well as almost 650 linear kilometres of copper coated steel telephone wire. There’s a lot out there that needs to be remediated, needs to be looked at.

I think for us, we need to continue to impress upon the federal government the desire to have that remediated. I guess looking at it in a positive view it will be economic activity hopefully for some companies in the central Mackenzie Valley in the Member’s riding, to help remediate the Canol Trail. Thank you.