Alfred Moses

Just in terms of the background on this building and some of the high heating costs, the foundation problems, poorly insulated walls, why wouldn’t this be kind of fast-tracked, especially when it got approval from the Peer Review Committee on April 21, 2011? Why has it taken so long to start the construction and now we’ll have to wait until 2017-18? Because with the poor insulation, the high heating costs, those all equal to high utility costs. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to ask the Minister, what’s the timeline that we can see some construction and some work on the road so that residents, visitors and tourists can see that road being fixed? Is there a timeline that we can start seeing the work being started?

In anticipation of the Building Canada Plan Fund to look at putting money into this project, in the interim what is the government doing now to address this issue? It is quite drastic, and as I mentioned in Committee of the Whole yesterday, there have been incidents where there have been accidents.

I’d like to ask the Minister, in the interim what are we doing to address the severity of this road?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, would like to recognize Mr. Jozef Carnogursky, president of Nihtat Gwich’in Council, a long-time friend and I really appreciate the work he’s done for the Gwich’in people up in Inuvik and the region and being a strong advocate for the people up in that region. Welcome, Jozef. I hope you enjoy the proceedings. Thank you.

I don’t think we should be waiting for an opportunity to have those discussions. I think that we’ve got a highway that we’re putting millions, hundreds of millions of dollars into and you want to give people, when they start seeing that, they want to come up and go to the Arctic Ocean and I think as Minister and leader for infrastructure of highways we shouldn’t wait for an opportunity, we should take the initiative and start those discussions. If we’re going to be opening up coast to coast to coast, people are going to have to drive through the Yukon to get up to Tuk and that should be a...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. One practice of this government every year is that we approve infrastructure budgets. When we approve these infrastructure budgets, one thing we have to understand is we are not approving these budgets but creating jobs throughout the North, we are helping build skills and creating opportunities for our residents, our local residents and people in the small communities.

One of those projects that was recently approved and brought to attention – even in the media and in this House over the last few weeks – is the Inuvik-Tuk Highway. When this government approves big...

Thank you. Just continuing on with that, I see there is a lot of highways mobile equipment that’s being purchased this year and when you look at the substantiation sheet there in a few places here, I see Fort McPherson is getting a loader. I was just kind of wondering, because over the wintertime and due to the weather, sometimes that section of highway gets closed for the amount of days and lack of equipment sometimes results in prolonged closures of the road and not being able to open it a lot sooner and you get a lot of people stuck in either Eagle Plains or trying to go back and you look...

With that work that they’re doing with DND, is a report expected to come to the House or whether or not the GNWT would have to cover any costs that might be associated with it, federal, like a joint partnership? I know we are doing a lot of, I guess, sovereignty work and a lot of exercises. We had a big exercise this year with the military, and I’m just wondering if the GNWT would also be committing any type of infrastructure dollars to that and if the report will be coming to this House as well.

Just on page 82 and talking about the airports, I know it is on the list and it’s something that I’ve brought up during general comments when we got started with the infrastructure process. I just wanted to ask the Minister, when do we expect to have an update on the work that’s being done for the runway, the survey work and all that information? When can we expect to get a report on that and make a decision? Also, just with the airport, as well, I know it is on the books to be replaced, the airport facility, and I’m just wondering what the plans are for that as well.

As I said, the youth of the Northwest Territories spoke up about this four years ago. I brought it and I asked questions in the House and we’re still trying to battle to get some really good support service and recovery programs. We’ve got to listen to the youth; we’ve got to listen to our elders who we heard in the communities and our residents of the Northwest Territories. This is more about whether or not we have enough people to have a treatment centre in the Northwest Territories. This is about people’s lives.

I will have questions for the Minister later on today. Thank you.