David Ramsay

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Within the next three months. Thank you.

We’re awaiting approvals from the federal government and word from the federal government on funding. As soon as that happens, we certainly will be moving things along.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Our expectation is, should the project move ahead, that work could start there potentially this season, which would mean people would be put to work almost immediately.

Mr. Speaker, we know that impaired driving leads to injuries, death, and millions of dollars in property damage across Canada every year. Statistics Canada recently reported the NWT and Yukon had the highest rates of impaired driving across the country in 2012. Ninety-four NWT residents were convicted for impaired driving last year. That number doesn’t include administrative suspensions where licences were removed temporarily for blowing over the legal limit in roadside breathalyser tests. The Department of Transportation is taking action to turn these dismal statistics around.

Today I’m...

The program will start being piloted in Yellowknife and in Hay River.

We’re working with some service providers here in the Northwest Territories that have the knowledge and the expertise to service the equipment, and we hope to move forward with a contract to allow them to work on the Ignition Interlock System here in the Northwest Territories, and they will be from the Northwest Territories.

It would be a way for them to get their licence back a little bit early, and it would be very beneficial for somebody whose livelihood depended on them driving. It’s been used in work vehicles that allow somebody to get back to work if they’re supporting a family. That’s what it’s intended to do.

Mr. Speaker, I can get that detail for the Member, but for the program itself, for somebody to enrol in the program, as I mentioned, it is $125 a month. That’s the cost for the individual. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, a great deal of consultation took place with other jurisdictions across the country. I mentioned in my Minister’s statement Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Newfoundland and Labrador. In other jurisdictions, they see reductions in impaired driving being reduced by 50 to 90 percent. We are very hopeful that once the program is put into place here in the Northwest Territories that we will see a reduction in impaired driving here in the NWT as well. Thank you.

We’d have to act very quickly in order to see construction start this season. As Members know, we’re already into March and the season isn’t too much longer. We’ve probably got another five or six weeks in the Beaufort-Delta to actually get a lot of that work done, so we’d have to work quickly.