Statements in Debates
I was talking about the Sahtu generally, of course. I sort of agree that we expect the regional hub to be good for the short term here. It’s the smaller airports that I’m wondering about and if they’re seeing any kind of magnitude-increase in activity. I know Tulita, a beautiful spot, but it’s a pretty modest facility there and so on.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. As I mentioned, I’ve been bringing this up for seven years now. Just a little bit on the history. The original construction of the Detah road was very shaky and I know the department is aware of this. It was actually thrown in very quickly at the recommendation of the member of the royalty that had visited Detah during the springtime during the breakup and ended up having a harrowing dog team ride across the deteriorating ice. So he was motivated to lobby very hard and, successfully, this road was put in, but it was put in without much planning or engineering and so on...
Thanks to the Minister for that. I guess I would appreciate it. I know that discussion with Mr. Yakeleya was interesting and appropriate here. I would like to expand that to the NWT, and obviously I’m very interested in Detah and Ndilo, as well as Yellowknife and so on.
Could we also get what the plan is for new child care facilities at the same time when the Minister provides that information? I understand that inspections are on their way now, but as soon as that’s available, if we can get the plan perhaps brought to committee or some sort of commitment there in the near future. Obviously...
Yeah, baloney, Mr. Chair, to the Minister. That’s absolute baloney. We can move dollars around.
The Minister and his staff so far have used three years, four years and five years for this project, depending on what they find with different things, studies that are underway now. So we can simply decide to do this over a longer period of time. We can decide to push for that in this agreement so that we can afford to do the maintenance that’s required in our highway system across the Northwest Territories. Certainly not all of it, but we can contribute significant amounts.
I guess this is the...
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to follow up on a conversation here and conversations earlier today on child care spaces and what facilities we are putting in place.
First of all, how many child care spaces or facilities do we have in the Northwest Territories? What is the capacity of our child care facilities across the Northwest Territories?
Thank you, Mr. Chair. The first question I have on this page is related to Highway No. 3. I don’t see any capital dollars being directed towards Highway No. 3. I think we know, and Mr. Neudorf has said many times, that it’s about the worst highway, most challenging highway in the Northwest Territories. I know there has been some really steady work on this highway and that I believe we have a little bit of research going on out there, too, trying to assess out what some more long-time solutions are, but it continues to be challenging to this day.
There are a number of people, a number of my...
We are in the process of reviewing the capital budget, and the government claims its spending the vast majority of the available funds building highways is an investment in our future. I would suggest that investing in our children has been demonstrated to have a better result, including economic result.
How much money is the government planning to invest in new daycare spaces over the remainder of our term in office as of today?
That was all I had on this page. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to follow up on my earlier Member’s statement with questions to the Minister for Education, Culture and Employment. During the last election campaign, the NWT Status of Women Council in the NWT asked all candidates the following: “If elected, would you commit to helping all communities in the NWT build affordable, quality, licensed child care facilities”? I will be tabling that later today.
I’m happy to report that candidates Bob McLeod, Glen Abernethy and Tom Beaulieu, and most of us on this side of the House made that commitment. The Minister himself did not...
Mr. Chair, I wasn’t even close. Maybe I can get an update on what happened with the Inuvik situation. I guess that is an airport that, because of the frequent temperature changes, gets moisture build-up and it was causing jets to slide and so on; scary stuff. What was the resolution on that issue? Thank you.