Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to recognize two Pages from Hay River who have been working with us all week: Jeffry Lamoureux, “JJ”; and Lily Gail Warrington. I’d also like to recognize my constituency assistant, Myrtle Graham, who’s been their chaperon all week. Thank you very much. Welcome to the House.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s with pride that I rise again today to announce that Buffalo Airways recently was awarded the best factual program or series at the Canadian Screen Awards.

As Mikey McBryan says, “Eighty-seven thousand fans can’t be wrong.”

I’d like to give a big shout out to Mikey McBryan for his hard work on the Ice Pilots series. We’re obviously disappointed that that series has come to an end, but we appreciate all of the exposure that the Northwest Territories got under that program.

We need to continue to support the film industry in the Northwest Territories. It’s a good economic driver; it’s a good tourism promotion thing for the Northwest Territories. We look forward to seeing some more awards coming, maybe through Mr. Andrew Stanley and Fur Harvesters of the Northwest Territories and many of the productions that are happening in the Northwest Territories. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Obviously, I would take that information. I look forward to that.

I wonder if I could also get a copy of the letter that was sent to the federal Minister. Thank you.

The Members have been talking about dredging in the Northwest Territories. I have heard some rumours of numbers out there.

Does the department have any estimates on what the dredging costs in Hay River and throughout the Northwest Territories would be? Thank you.

I’m going to have to pry the details from the Minister. Can I get more detailed information? Was that letter signed off, and which federal Ministers was it cc’d to and who was it communicated to? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have questions for the Minister of Transportation today. It has been at least 10 days since I brought up the issue of dredging in the Northwest Territories being a requirement and a need.

Has the Minister sent off any communication to the federal Minister responsible for dredging to deal with this issue? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise, too, with my nice pink shirt, but I will talk today about the spring and the effects of spring coming up.

The days are getting longer. The weather is still not getting better, but in Hay River in the next week they’re starting to work on the ponds and we’re going to have our next Pond Hockey Tournament.

The Pond Hockey Tournament this year is March 20th to the 22nd and those teams that want to sign up, please sign up now. You only need four people to be a team and you can come out on the Hay River rinks and skate your heart away. We’re promising that there’s going to be warmer weather towards the end of March and we’re looking forward to the events. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just have a few general comments for this department. Obviously, I think almost everybody has spoken of the disastrous fire season and we talked about in the past and business plans and stuff like that about the base, and I guess it’s the cost of fire suppression is going to be the cost, I guess. Has there been any consideration in this budget to up that base of fire suppression? We know over a period of time there have been expenditures, and obviously last year was an exceptional year. Obviously, we wouldn’t want to set that as the benchmark, but is the department looking at increasing its base for fire suppression over the next little while? I think we talked about a three or a five or even a 10 year running average of what we did for fire suppression and going from that basis for future years to budgeting suppression so that we actually have a closer to an average amount, obviously, maybe excluding some of the exceptional years like last year. I would like to hear what the department has to say about our base for fire suppression.

I’d like to know what this department’s involvement has been with the fracking regulations and where we are going forward with regulations on fracking. Obviously, I would think this department would be highly involved as far as a baseline study to finding out what areas where we may potentially be doing fracking. Let’s say in the Sahtu area, getting involved in the baseline study. We need to have that baseline to know, going forward, what the effects of any activity would be. We know that some of the oils and stuff like that in the Sahtu are naturally occurring right now, so obviously we’d want to know what the base is before industry gets in there too far and gets too involved, obviously, for comparison.

Like my colleague, obviously, the energy that was there before, I’m not sure if everything has been transferred over to Public Works and Services for energy. Obviously, the funding of the Arctic Energy Alliance has been very effective. I think since we’ve gone to the Energy Charrette, one of the big questions there and discussions was about efficiencies and people taking action to make their homes and their appliances more efficient and trying to alleviate cost of living that way. I’m not sure if everything is transferred over there, going from some history notes that we had at business plans, but some of them may be dated now that we’ve transferred some of that to Public Works and Services. Again, if there’s any of that stuff still in ENR.

Obviously another project of interest is biomass, where we are going forward with biomass. The forest industry, from my understanding, we finally actually have maybe an opportunity to actually have a forestry industry that will require a forest management team there in place. That opportunity

is obviously very exciting for the South Slave. I’m looking forward to maybe seeing what the department is doing to linking that opportunity with some of, maybe, the fire suppression as far as smart communities. I know the department is going around to communities right now and talking about how to make your communities fire smart, and maybe there’s an opportunity to do some of that forestation in communities and maybe tie it in with our biomass potential project.

I know we are close to signing some of the transboundary water agreements and if the department could just give me a little bit of an update where we stand. I think we’ve just about dotted all the i’s and crossed the t’s with Alberta. I’m not sure where we’re at with BC and Saskatchewan, so if I could get a little bit of that information, it would be very interesting.

I guess we’re dealing with operations, but the whole budget has capital included in it, and I guess I am concerned that we didn’t evaluate that much more the 802 versus 215 units and even the option of privatizing some of the fire suppression. I’m still getting reports in of some of the assessment of the 802s, concerns with them, incident reports, capabilities for fire suppression in heavy, dense areas. I know we’ve used some of them lately, but I still continue to get some reports from other jurisdictions that they’re finding them to be ineffective in some areas, so obviously a concern in an area of the Northwest Territories especially after the fire suppression system that we just had. I think those are most of my comments.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister has talked about their website. Will the consultant have a link to their website on how to contact them directly to provide their input through the website and through public process? Thank you.