Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise today to advise the Members of the House of the passing of Mr. Karl Mueller of Enterprise. Karl...everyone knew him. He suffered a heart attack and passed away on May the 12

th

of

this year at the extended care unit of H.H. Williams Hospital in Hay River.

Karl was born on April 19, 1929, in Vienna, Austria. He immigrated to Canada in 1957, with Toronto being his first Canadian home. He then moved to the North, living and mining in the Yukon for several years before moving to Fort Smith, where he lived for approximately 20 years and worked in the field of construction. He then decided to move to Enterprise. He thought it was a good idea and a better location for a construction business.

It was after this move that he started his own company, his own business called Karl Mueller Construction, and he became very well known throughout the Territories for his abilities in the area of construction.

Karl also built a lot of our highways and winter roads in communities such as Fort Smith, Fort Resolution and Fort Providence, and he did a lot of work in the Sahtu. He also began clearing for a potential highway between Norman Wells and Inuvik for the federal government, which never became a reality. At least not yet, Mr. Speaker. Not too many people remember that.

Karl moved to Enterprise in 1975 and he lived there until he was admitted to the hospital in 2007, and he always acknowledged that he was a very proud resident of the community of Enterprise. He lived there with his wife, Anne Leskiw-Mueller. Karl lived with Anne for about 20 years before they got married a short while ago, on May the 7

th

, in the

extended care unit.

Anne tells us that Karl had been feeling much better in the last couple of weeks, and she had talked to him about a half an hour before his passing and he was in very good spirits.

Most of you know Karl was a very active person of Enterprise, a very outspoken person, and a councillor of the community for a number of years. He served on the hamlet council for about eight years. He always believed, and firmly believed, that one day Enterprise and the whole Northwest Territories would be booming.

Karl is survived...

The answer is no. Our practice is to try to hire students based on their program of study. If there are students who are planning to be architects, engineers, information technology students, those are the ones we focus on. Sometimes the level of applicants in those areas is not the highest; then we move into the trades and try to hire people in those areas. If there’s still a void in our numbers, then we’ll hire labour positions.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think I answered that question. More specific, we have hired 13 students this year. Our target, again, is to try to max the hire from last year. Of course, we have a budget that we have to follow and it’s going to be a challenge, but I’ve instructed our staff to try to achieve the 17 that we hired last year.

I’d need clarity to that question on whether he’s referring to this year or since the start of this government, Mr. Speaker.

There are opportunities in all our projects that we undertake to deliver, including with the contractors. Thank you.

With the departments I represent, our goal is to hire 48 students, and we’re just about there. We’re short roughly a dozen students. The reason for that is we have a number of students who have identified that they want to work with us but they still haven’t, in some cases, finalized their registration with HR or are requiring certain documentation. We fully expect to reach our goal of 48 for both departments. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We place great emphasis on hiring students. We think it’s an important part of our practice to have students involved in our projects and in our departments. With the departments that I represent, both Public Works and Services and Transportation, so far we’ve hired 34 students. Thank you.

Thank you. We do place great value on our ability to have discussions with the NWT Construction Association. We deal with other associations across the Territories, also. We also value the input from the MLAs.

Mr. Speaker, we’re always in a position to improve our capital process, improve our capital delivery, and our target is to deliver all projects on budget, on schedule. However, there are always factors that come into play that don’t allow us to have that happen, but we want to continue to refine that process and see if our percentages can continue to improve and we expect it will. Thank you.

Thank you. I would have to question that comment and review what information we provide to the Construction Association. We do have a very good relationship, as we do with the other organizations and Aboriginal governments. In many cases, once the budget is approved, we do provide that information to the relevant organizations and governments. Now this information is also public, once it’s approved. So in many cases there is ability to access the information off the Internet and it’s posted. So I would have to follow up to see if that is indeed the situation. Thank you.