Michael McLeod

I apologize if it was confusing to the Member. I’ll try to speak a little slower.

Mr. Speaker, I’ve already stated that we have not, as a government, endorsed the COR program to be part of our contracting. The NWT Construction Association is going to consult with the industry and they will talk to their members. We are not moving forward and incorporating it in our contracts. Thank you.

I think it would be pretty evident that as soon as the deficiencies are dealt with and we’re comfortable that all is well, we usually do our best to get the holdback released. Thank you.

The holdbacks are usually released upon the deficiencies being dealt with. Thank you.

A big challenge, the biggest challenge, and will continue to be the biggest challenge, will be to secure appropriate funding to continue the work on the road once all the approvals are in place. We would expect that as soon as we hear positive response, we would, of course, move forward and try to secure those dollars to do further work. We would also have to start the process to develop more detailed road design. While I can’t commit to any dollars for the life of this government, I would expect that those issues will be brought forward and will continue to take precedence. The work would...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This has been an issue that has been on the drawing board for some time. We have moved forward fairly quickly in the area of Tuk and Inuvik with a project description report, a report that we had anticipated was going to take several years and ended up taking a little over a year. That’s been submitted for review. We are, and have been, raising it with the federal government. We, as early as last week, met with the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of INAC and this was raised as something we wanted to talk further about. Also, while attending the National Council...

I’m sure I don’t have to explain the process to consult with the Members in this House. The Member is quite aware of that. We have been consulting and talking to stakeholders and different groups over the last number of years. We plan to continue doing that and do further discussion. We’d like to narrow down the options to one and start engineering and environmental reviews that need to be determined in some of the outcomes. That’s going to be done in short order. I just have to ask the Member to be a little bit patient, I guess. He’s anxious to get going, but the work is moving forward and we...

Mr. Speaker, I don’t have an exact date. The report, as I indicated the last time the Member asked questions, is under review and we’re doing reconciliation. As soon as that’s done and concluded, we can provide it to the Members. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The answer is yes. The steel has started to arrive in Hay River and some of the steel has been delivered to the community of Fort Providence. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, there are a couple of questions there. The question on the Auditor General’s report is something that we have been working on with the Auditor General. We provided material over the last while to the Auditor General. The indications are that the report will come out this spring. Thank you.

We expect all the steel to be coming in batches over the winter and construction should be starting in earnest on the superstructure right away. We plan to have all the material for the superstructure on site by the spring of this coming year. Thank you.