Michael McLeod

Mr. Speaker, this program is designed towards the Homeownership program. The CARE program is a lot more open and fewer conditions are placed on it for homeowner repairs.

Mr. Speaker, the NWT Housing Corporation, including myself, has sat down on a number of occasions now to look at some of the areas that have been causing issues to come forward. The threshold seems to be an area that we need to commit to doing a review on. It’s been a while now that this program’s been in place. We’re hearing a lot of feedback in this area, and we want to do that.

The other area, of course, is to be able to deal with the large number of questions and requests that come in from the general public to the MLAs and also to me as Minister. We are working on a new initiative there...

I’m pleased today to recognize a constituent from Kakisa, who is the subchief of the community and is also their oil and gas adviser. He’s a private contractor and president of the Aboriginal Sport Circle and many other things: Mr. Julian Landry. Also Allan Landry from Kakisa. I’d like to welcome him, and also Mr. Ted Nolan, who’s a former NHL hockey player and coach. I’m also told he played with the Coldwell Banker Blades for one tournament here in Yellowknife.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise in the House today to inform Members that effective October 1, 2008, penalties under the NWT Motor Vehicles Act have changed. Fines for speeding in school and construction zones, along with fines for driving without proper insurance and without an authorized driver’s licence, have all increased.

Increasing the fines in the school and construction zones will help protect the safety of children and workers and others who use the highways. Driving at slower speeds provides for a greater driver reaction time. High penalties will be combined with increased enforcement...

Mr. Speaker, we’re on schedule. The bridge is anticipated to be built by 2010. There is, as the Member indicated, some slippage in time frames. At the initial start of this project some material didn’t arrive as was expected, and also the high water deferred the initial start-up.

We are behind a little over a month, a month to six weeks. We expect to have all the four piers done over the winter, and we don’t expect any cost overruns.

The Member is correct that work can commence very quickly once all the design, once the drainage, once all the surveys are done — gravel production, everything else is completed. In this case we still are doing the design and we have completed the majority of what we plan to do. We want to go into the community and share that information with the community that the Member represents and move forward. Providing everything is in order, we hope to have the work done by the end of November, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, the contract has, as the Member indicated, been signed under a maximum guaranteed price, and we expect any delays or things of that nature to be borne by the contractor and the corporation. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, certainly, we can commit to doing that. We’ll share the information with the honourable Member and also give him the time and the dates that we plan to go into the community of Resolute and share that information with the community. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is correct. There was in the June budget $1 million budgeted for work on Highway No. 6. The work is ongoing. It’s a late start in our season, to have our budget approved in June. We have done the design assessment. We’re working on gravel sources, and we’ll continue to do so.

Mr. Speaker, the methodology that is being used right now is to have each community develop a capital plan, an undertaking that has been already started. We require that information as part of our Gas Tax Agreement.

We also have transferred all the capital dollars to the communities, and they now decide what projects they want to see in their communities. It’s the same plan, the same capital projections that will come forward and will be utilized as we have the discussion with the federal minister to sign off on community projects. It will indicate what portions of dollars will come from where...