Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m still shaken from that first answer and the second answer. How about this? Will the Minister commit to being an agent of change and working with committee the way I suggested in my second question? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m always willing to have input from anyone in the Northwest Territories, including Members from the other side or my colleagues along this side of the table. It’s just going to take all of us to make a better territory for everybody, especially around manufacturing.

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife North.

Masi. Minister of Transportation.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As anyone who knows anyone who has driven this stretch of highway in the last few years know, it’s a very challenging section of highway in the Northwest Territories; probably one of the most challenging. Due to the permafrost degradation and stuff that’s happening out there and the melting and disturbances that are happening on that section of highway, the department had to reach out to the federal government a number of years ago to get some research dollars to have a look at this and develop a program and have test sections on this highway. I think we have four sections, if I remember correctly, on Highway 3 to determine the most effective option to look at how we can assess the ground conditions and how we can move forward with repairs.

With that said, we’ve actually spent $18 million on this road in the last four years. As I said many times in this House, I can probably take all the infrastructure money in the Northwest Territories and put it into highways and it would never fix or infrastructure deficit just in the highway system in the Northwest Territories due to the challenges that we have based around climate change. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you to the Minister for his reply. I appreciate that the Government of the Northwest Territories is working with other orders of government to release or some form of funding to help invest in this concern; but that’s also troubling to know that over the last four years we’ve put $18 million into the stretch of highway that still proves to be a safety issue and continues to be a challenge.

I’d like to ask the Minister: what is the ultimate answer for fixing this stretch of highway? How are we going to stop going from putting band aids on it to making and finding a permanent, safe solution for this stretch of highway?

As I’ve said, we’ve worked with Transport Canada to leverage the dollars to monitor and assess the performance of this road with the conditions that we’re presently under. Like I said, with climate change, it makes it very difficult to keep up with the maintenance of it, especially with the lack of capital dollars that we have available to us to do this; but we will continue to do our research and monitoring this road and try to come up with new rehabilitative techniques on how we’re going to address this problem moving forward. I can keep Members informed on some of those test results from research moving forward.

Again, I’m going to appreciate the commitment here that the Minister is making with regard to the road and improving the road itself. Let’s skip over for a moment and talk about public safety.

What can the Minister share with us in terms of how we’re going to in the meantime make sure that folks that are travelling up and down this road; a number of them in fact for the first time tourists coming to the North? What are we going to be doing to make sure that their safety is protected in the meantime? By that, I mean will we have improved signage? Will we have maybe potentially reduced speed limits, something of that nature? Can the Minister please explain to us how are we protecting people who use the highway?

The department regularly evaluates the condition of the. We have our maintenance crews that travel up and down the highway daily to gather information daily. They give us feedback on that. We have, as I said, our test sections that are out there, but to get out for safety is the number one priority of the transportation system in the Northwest Territories. We use a number of initiatives to reach out to people in the Northwest Territories and people visiting NWT, as I think and believe the Member talked yesterday in the house about how we’re going to get our message out there, be it Twitter, radio advertising, Facebook, but also on the commercial side of stuff. We have a great working relationship with the transportation companies. I think when something arises, be it around forest fires or those sorts of things, we have direct e-mail with a number of the commercial people as well as being from Hay River, at opportune times when safety is a major concern, we’ve used the electronic sign system on the south lake to warn people of the condition of the road coming north.

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Sahtu.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Following up on my Members’ statement here addressed to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. When students are away from their home and not well connected, to hear some of the many opportunities or the developments of potential opportunities, is there information or career readiness sessions that are in-house in the Fort Smith residential unit where they reside in or at the school itself? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Masi. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First of all, I just want to commend the Member from Sahtu, the honourable Member from Sahtu, for actually making that trip to Fort Smith and to the Thebacha campus to check on his constituents who are seeking post-secondary education. In all of our campuses across the NWT, we do have counsellors who are able to help students should they be going through some difficult times or having challenges going to post-secondary education. We also have focused on life skills. This is the first time that some of the students might be away from home and in a different community. We do have counsellors as well as the staff provide supports to these students as they are seeking post-secondary education. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I’m glad to hear that there are supports there. My next question, Mr. Speaker, is: can the Minister provide me with minutes of the sessions if they are in fact going on, we may have some contributing dialogue or input to what we think that the students might want to hear from opportunities back home.

We don't have some of the statistics that the Member is looking for. We can work with the Aurora College senior management and look at what some of the concerns are that might be coming from our students, as well as maybe some statistics on counselling sessions, sessions that are providing opportunities for life skills training for our students. We can reach out to Aurora College to see if those stats are available and share them with the Member.

I welcome the information coming from the Minister's office here. At the time of receiving the material, I will get back to the Minister of further questions. In preparation to do so, is the Minister willing to put together a package of information so I can also share that with the leadership of the region I represent?

Yes, we can work with the Aurora College partners, ask them for what kind of orientation packages that they give to students for support that they need through post-secondary education. We will look at all three campuses to see what they provide and provide it to the Member should his constituents either want to go to Aurora College in Inuvik, Thebacha in Fort Smith, or the Yellowknife campus here in Yellowknife.

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Frame Lake.

Merci, Monsieur le President. My questions are for the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment. Can the Minister highlight what he and his department seek to achieve through a Mineral Resources Act? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Masi. Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The department is looking at a number of things under the Mineral Resource Act moving forward: acquiring mineral rights, ministry and royalties, those sorts of things. We have no intention of regulating mining activities under the proposed MRA. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I appreciate the response from the Minister. I will help him out with what the MVRMA is all about. In my statement, I highlighted several issues that I think should be considered during the drafting of a Mineral Resources Act. I would like to know whether the Minister and his department intend to seek specific exemptions or exceptions for mining activities now regulated under the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act. Are we going to loosen up or weaken our environmental regime to allow mining to go ahead?

The department is actually conducting research right now on how we are going to move forward. I don't think anything is locked down because we are going to have to go through consultation, public engagement. We are going to have to go in front of standing committee. There are a number of things that we are going to have to do that are going to guide this document as we move forward. We are welcome to any suggestions.