David Ramsay

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thank the Member for her statement and questions today in the House. I think it’s a great opportunity, not only for Hay River but for the Northwest Territories, and if we can plug in the tourism angle, and arts and crafts, and a number of other things around the territory into that channel in promoting the Northwest Territories, I think that’s a good initiative. We’d be more than happy, at ITI, to sit down with the Member and see what support the community needs to have a staff person located there to maximize our opportunities through that channel. Thank you.

The Member is correct. We hadn’t done it for a while so there’s a bit of a shock there. We’re going to try to, as we move forward, look at it on an inflationary basis, year to year, so that there’s not a big gap of 10 years before you look at fees again. Yes, we’re doing just that.

Thank you, Madam Chair. That analysis and decisions could, in fact, even happen this month. I mean, spring is coming and decisions are going to have to be made, so, yes, we’ll be moving on that as soon as we get the analysis done.

We’re going to get word back from the federal government on the approvals for the funding agreement hopefully sometime this week. Members of this House, when the project is going to be approved, will approve this project and they’ll have all the information available to them so that they can make a decision whether or not they support the project moving forward. That should happen, hopefully, very soon.

Thank you. It still is relatively new, but things are on track. We continue to collect tolls. On an annual basis it will be somewhere over $4 million. We have an annual admin cost on the tolls of about $300,000. It is an automated thing. There are pictures of the licence plates that are taken of the trucks that are crossing northbound on the Deh Cho Bridge. So the good news is that the bridge is in service, that tolls are being collected and there haven't been hiccups thus far. Thank you.

Thank you. It’s not anticipated that there will be any fee increases associated with people accessing services on-line. Thank you.

I just didn’t want to, and I don’t want to, divulge confirmation information that was provided to the committee two weeks ago. In answering the Member’s question, those discussions are still currently underway. We are trying to sort those out. We’re working with the Inuvialuit on getting answers to those questions, and when we do have those questions fully answered and we have a package from the federal government, we’ll be back in front of committee and ready, willing and able to answer all the questions the Members have. Thank you.

The fees related to airports were part of the overall fee review that took place last year and are detailed in this budget under revenue. Yes, we had some inflationary catch-up to do in a number of cases, and we’re coming forward with some new increases to some of those revenues, including those of airports.

Getting back to cost recovery, if we had a request for the Cardinal from industry in using that to cross from Norman Wells or Tulita, that’s something that we would certainly consider on a cost-recovery basis. We could see how that progresses.

As far as marine traffic, I think that will be moving forward. There will be much more marine traffic this coming summer and the following summer with the advance of Husky’s all-weather road into one of their leases in the Sahtu. As well, Conoco has plans to build an all-weather road on the other side of the Mackenzie. As well, there will be more marine...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When we get a response back from the federal government, we’ll be sure to share it with Members. As soon as we get word back from the federal government. Our ask was 75/25 and that’s the ask that went to the federal government.