Bob Bromley

That’s it for now. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’ll look forward to that update. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d like to ask a different one. I’m sure the Minister is aware of Discovery Air’s plans of acquisition of aircraft. I’m wondering what work the department is doing to prepare for the operational safety and reliability issues associated with airstrips. We’ve got about a year and a half, according to the last news release, on the Discovery Air plans. Maybe there have been changes and updates. About a year and a half/two years from now, we are expecting to have airships occupying the airspace in the Northwest Territories and using our facilities, I presume. I’m wondering...

Thank you. Is that in terms of timing or whether they would be qualified on a national, meet the national standards for qualifications? Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, colleagues. Thank you, Minister Ramsay, for those comments. I don’t think I have said the words we shouldn’t build the Inuvik-Tuk highway. I am talking about maintenance of our highways here and balancing it with going aggressively after large, uncosted new projects. The Minister is on record as saying that he would like construction to start this spring or this fall, which I am all for enthusiasm and stuff. I am hoping the Minister won’t try and put words in my mouth and didn’t mean to do that, because I have not ever said that. Thanks for that...

That’s very good to have those stats. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So these people have become residents of the Northwest Territories. I am wondering if we know where roughly, by region or something like that, if we have that sort of information and are monitoring that. Thank you.

I’d like to pose my question now that I’ve got confirmation that that’s where that is. The maintenance of the existing network of highways is purportedly, according to the department presentations, priority number one, and I think most of my colleagues would agree that that’s an appropriate policy, a correct approach. Unfortunately, we have fallen far behind on maintenance of our highway systems and abandoned that responsibility to a large degree, especially in this budget this year, in favour of accelerating new projects and at an unwarranted pace, as was referenced by the deputy minister.

The...

I’m happy to leave it at that. I do understand that we’re not going to do everything at once here. I do understand that these things take some ramping up. I’m not a big fan of throwing a huge amount of money at something and then have the dollars slack off as we learn how to spend them most effectively. We need to be appropriately thorough and comprehensive as we develop these programs, and I’ll look forward to having more discussions. But I appreciate the clarity that we are on the same wavelength there, and as I say, I will look forward to further discussions on this. I’ll leave it at that...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’ll keep them brief here. I know that the department is doing some work in the fuel efficiency area, particularly in the marine transportation and in some of the greening of the transportation facilities. This is good work that needs to continue and, in fact, needs to be government-wide. For the Department of Transportation, the potential gains compared to the emissions of greenhouse gases, for example, are pretty modest. So, much more serious is the greenhouse gas emissions and environmental impacts from transportation activity itself.

I’d like to know what this...

Thanks for the Minister’s commitment and reminder that he’s already committed. I appreciate that. It is difficult, because obviously schools have to be funded ahead of time as to what they’re doing and so on. So I appreciate that there’s a bit of a need for some advance.

Obviously this has been under discussion before and I’d hoped that some thinking had been done on this, but I’ll look forward to working with the Minister on this and seeing if we can increase our effectiveness, and perhaps with fewer dollars and it being done and tie the funding to real needs in each school. Obviously a...

Mr. Chair, I look forward to that update. Just more general backing off to a bigger picture here, are our educational authorities consistently within budget from year to year? I know, for example, in some of our health authorities there, they are very challenged and they end up with some annual deficits. Could I get a little update on how the education authorities work fiscally? Thank you.