Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, yes, 68 is not enough. We could ask for more. We could use more. But obviously that's not the case.

If I can just it's a technical question, so if I could ask David Moore, Mr. Moore to add anything further. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Mr. Moore.

Thank you. Any other further questions, comments to asset management. Member for Monfwi.

Well, you can correct me, I am not too sure about this, but I know we're talking about infrastructure and asset management.

I'm looking at Whati access road and it's good, you know, it's -- I guess the road is going to be opening on November 30th. But there is the concern, I'm not too sure, maybe it's programs and services so that's why I said maybe correct me, please. And the community, there is some concerns regarding emergency response team and who is going to be responsible. They need clear directions. They need a commitment of the GNWT of who's going to be responding because it's going to be a busy highway. I'm sure, like I was looking at some message the other day and then people are anxious, you know, to get out to -- so I'm just wondering who is going to be responsible regarding the emergency response team so I just need a clear direction of where I should address but I don't want to miss the opportunity of voicing that.

Thank you, Member for Monfwi. As we're going through this in Committee of the Whole, this is the asset and that would be considered more of the operations and I know that if you talk -- we can bring this up in the other areas, because I think that has been raised over through a lot of the different highways, so like the Behchoko, even in Inuvik, so it's more of the operations and lack of, so.

But if you have anything to do with the road itself, then you can ask the Minister and it's okay. All right. Okay. Yeah, no that's good. All right, so I will move to Member for Frame Lake.

Thanks, Madam Chair. So this past summer, I had a chance to drive out to Fort Simpson, down to Fort Smith, so got to see a big part of our highway system firsthand. And parts of it were in good shape and parts of it are definitely not in good shape, particularly the part between the junction where Highway 3 goes off towards Fort Providence and off to Fort Simpson, there's a stretch in the middle there that is not very -- in my opinion, actually quite unsafe. And I just don't know why we keep building new roads when we can't even properly maintain and fix up the ones we've got.

And then my colleague from Monfwi talked about how there's concerns with public safety once the road to Whati is opened. I've got concerns that I'll be bringing forward in terms of readiness for harvesting, wildlife harvesting along the road. We don't seem to work, or support communities when roads get built to them, and Tuk being a good example and I think Whati is going to be the same story all over again.

But I do have some specific questions in here. The Whati access road, you know, I've been a Member for six years now and I only found out maybe a year ago that the Tlicho all-season road doesn't even go to a community, that it actually ends up outside of Whati and that, as I think the former MLA for Monfwi described the access road as "a moose path."

So I see that there's money in here now to fix this up. I just find this astounding that we don't even build a road right to a community but how much now is this access road going to cost that's in the budget here. Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Member. Minister.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, when I first became Minister of Infrastructure, I was quite shocked about that as well.

In terms of the amount, I think we're along the lines of -- does -- David, yeah, can I hand it over to Mr. Moore. I don't have the number in front of me. Sorry, Madam Chair.

Mr. Moore.

Thank you. Member.

Thanks, Madam Chair. I just think that if we're going to build roads, more roads in the future, you need to do some kind of full cost accounting to make sure that we deal with all the impacts of them on communities, on wildlife, you actually build roads to communities not to nowhere. But those are just gratuitous comments from a lowly Regular MLA, Madam Chair.

So the Inuvik to Tuk highway, the listing here says reconstruction work. This seems to be a pretty new highway. How much reconstruction work is required on this and is any of it sort of covered under any sort of warranty or guarantee. Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Minister.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, in 2020, maintenance work was completed on Inuvik-Tuk Highway which included some gravel surfacing. Also 26 kilometers of the section between Kilometer 26 and 138 was about a cost of $495,000 and there were also repairs onto the bridge.

The Department of Infrastructure engaged Associated Engineering to assess some of the road conditions, review some of the existing operations, and I'm not going to use up Members' time but I'm going to look over to David Moore to see if he has the exact number. Because we did apply to federal funding to do a little bit of work on that highway as well. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Moore.

Thank you. Member.

Thanks, Madam Chair. So, yeah, it looks like there's more coming towards us in terms of O and M for roads that are built and we never really understand the O and M when we build them. But I had asked if any of this work is covered -- or should have been covered through any kind of guarantee or, you know, we build the thing, presumably the people that build it have some sort of responsibility to build it to some kind of standard and there's a guarantee period or something for performance. Are we outside of that range now so all of this stuff is coming out of our own pocket or is there any kind of guarantee period built into these things when we build roads. Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Minister.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, there is -- the warranty was one year. And, yes, we are outside the range. There is no more warranty now. So the Department of Infrastructure applied for federal funding for $14 million over a five-year period. And with that, you know, you look at -- and if the Member from the Nunakput was here he would agree with me -- in terms of the climate change impacts are the major issue on the road that have come just in the last year since the road has been opened. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Member.

Yeah, no, thanks for that. I had the opportunity to try to drive up the Inuvik to Tuk highway this spring after it opened and we could only get to about Kilometer 22 before the mud was up to about the hubcaps on the truck, so the Speaker and I had to turn around.

I guess my last observation is that in this part of the budget, we're spending about ten times as much as we are on housing, and I just don't think we have our priorities in the right place, Madam Chair. I said that yesterday and I'm going to continue that theme probably on in to the next item for this department, that we just don't have our priorities in the right place when it comes to this capital budget. And I just leave it at that for now. Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Member. Did you want to respond, Minister. No? Okay. Any other further questions. Oh, Member for Great Slave.