Marsi cho, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in favour of this motion. I believe that there have been mistakes made in the delivery of goods to the High Arctic communities. Initially, when NTCL was purchased by this government, I was surprised. I believe it happened around Christmas a couple years ago. I was surprised that NTCL was purchased and then, further on, surprised that MTS was created out of NTCL.
At that point, I thought, well, I guess it would be a positive thing since NTCL may not be able to continue operations, but I also felt that, with our growing debt, I thought it would difficult for our government to buy all these things, considering that we often hear on small initiatives that we need, in our small communities, for employment.
Little initiatives like small roads, access roads, and things like that, docks, these are little items that we had requested in the communities. Often, I am not able to get it through the budgetary process. I think a Member has indicated that we ask for things and that our small items are often refused, while it was easy for the Cabinet to purchase NTCL and put it into operation.
I also know that some of the equipment that was purchased from NTCL was likely grandfathered and not something that we would be able to bring in new into the system at that point. We bought a lot of equipment like that that would probably not be usable the next time the regulations are upgraded or even maybe beyond use now. For that reason, I know that the federal government is supporting our government to buy new barges.
I thought that the shipment of the items into the High Arctic communities, I felt that was a mistake because I thought that then it happened so many times. This happened so many times by a company that was in the business of doing it and knew how to do it. They were successful in delivering the items into the communities.
We, on the other hand, had only the second opportunity this year, this summer, to be able to deliver the materials. At this point, we have essentially a 50 percent failure rate on delivering things to the High Arctic communities. Even that is, you know, there are a lot of factors involved in that. The solution, and what kind of got to me, I know that flying everything in would be expensive, but as another Member said, maybe there's a way. There are some costs offset and it may not be as expensive as possible.
The refusal for this Minister to actually listen to solutions was what kind of made me wonder if he was serious about trying to solve the issue or was just insisting on defending himself, or saying, "No, it's not my fault, so there's no reason for me to come up with a solution." You know, I had the question and I asked the Minister: how about a regional operation out of Inuvik as an example? An example, I thought that just pretty well all of the Mackenzie Valley communities could be serviced by winter road right up to Fort Good Hope. Then when you get to Tsiigehtchic, an all-season road and all-season road to Inuvik, all-season road to Tuktoyaktuk. The only other community on this side of the Northwest Territories that needed to have barge service is Lutselk'e. Lutselk'e, I believe, gets one, maybe two barges, but mostly one barge per year handles that community. I thought a small scaled-down operation in Hay River and then a smaller operation out of Inuvik to address the Arctic communities who had no other options. Lutselk'e and the Arctic communities that didn't get their items this year on a barge have no option except the barge.
The government spends a lot of money building winter roads. All of the Sahtu, all of the Tlicho communities are all winter road communities, and they don't barge in there, but they manage without a barge. I thought that a nice solution might be to set something up in Inuvik and then out of Inuvik to be able to barge out of there and have a small regional operation there. One in Hay River seemed like a good solution for me. I felt that it would also be a lower cost to the Marine Transportation Services. I guess there was the private business that that company was after, or the department was after that, you know, wanted to continue to barge out of Hay River all the way into the Inuvik communities.
I felt that the Minister could have listened and at least maybe given us a response to say, "Yes, I will look into it." That would have been essentially all that would have satisfied me, the idea of looking into it, the idea of having a small scaled-down operation in two locations and still run by the government and not compete against a private business of other people, needed items and private items. See, the items they could get a private shipper to bring the stuff to them.
Our reason for backing MTS was to provide a service to our citizens, citizens in the Northwest Territories at the best economic possibility, but the Minister indicated to me in the House here that wouldn't happen as long as he was still Minister.
For that reason, we are here today because we felt like we needed to find some sort of solution to the issues that were created. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.