David Ramsay

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don’t have the exact figures with me, but I’d be more than happy to provide those to the Member when I do get them. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We continue to pursue the completion of the environmental assessment and that is currently underway. We’ve also done a great deal of geotechnical analysis on the route and are working with both the community leadership in Tuktoyaktuk and Inuvik. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Further to my Return to Written Question 2-17(3), I wish to table the following two documents, entitled “Department of Transportation Negotiated DOT Contracts April 2009 to June 2012” and “Department of Transportation Sole Source DOT Contracts April 2009 to June 2012.”

Mr. Speaker, I have a return to written question submitted by Mr. Hawkins on May 29, 2012, regarding negotiated, sole-source or similar contracts.

Later today, at the appropriate time, I will table documents titled “Sole Source DOT Contracts April 2009-June 2012” and “Negotiated Contracts DOT April 2009-June 2012.” Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We have to get a determination of what the price is going to be on the construction of the Inuvik-Tuk highway. Before we go to the federal government and get that number, we need to know exactly what we’re talking about. Again, this is part of the exercise of doing the geotechnical work, going through the environmental assessment, and like other partially federally funded projects in this territory that we’ve seen through the Building Canada Plan, we need to do an environmental assessment first. We are going to continue down that road. Again, Mr. Speaker, the discussions are ongoing with the...

When that material becomes available, we will ensure that Members are brought up to speed on that material. Again, our best guess would be it would happen sometime this fall. I know we’re back in the House in October. Hopefully, during the October sitting we can have that time to sit down with committee and go over the findings that we have arrived at. Thank you.

That would undoubtedly happen this coming fall. It’s important that this work gets done. I can’t underline that enough. We need to know what we’re getting ourselves into. We fully intend to try to identify where the granular material is. This is our effort to do that, to go through the environmental assessment process so that when decisions are made by this government, we will know what we are getting ourselves into. Thank you.

Our expectation is that could happen sometime in November. To be on the safe side, I would say the last week of November.

There are various options that could come into play. It could be paved in sections as it’s complete. If it doesn’t happen that way, it will happen in September, weather permitting. There’s always cold surfacing that could happen. There’s technology out there now that would allow it to be done in colder weather. Optimum conditions and our expectation is that would be done by mid-September.

Thank you. Those questions on procurement remain outstanding and we do have to look at that. As soon as we get a better indication of what the road is going to cost – and we’re going to get those figures when we’re done the environmental assessment, we’re done the geotechnical analysis – we will get a better determination of what the road will cost. We still have to have some further discussions with the federal government on funding and we intend on doing that soon. Thank you.