Michael McLeod

Yes, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m glad to hear that the Member is not criticizing me for a change.

---Laughter

The Yellowknife driver and vehicle licensing office handles about 60 percent of all transactions that are required in the Northwest Territories. Over the last while we’ve done a lot of work in redesigning the office adding additional hardware. We’ve reviewed and improved the process. We’ve tried to get a setting that’s more comfortable for our clients and more privacy.

I think that has gone a long way in the last two years to reduce the waiting times to around 21 minutes with a processing time...

Right now the plan is to have all information gathered by the end of August, the final decision on realignment by the month of September, and start the engineering in the same month of September and into October. We want to have our tenders out for construction sometime in October/November and we’d like to have the construction start this year, the site preparation, and the stockpiling of gravel and crushing and work on the embankment next year. We’d like to have the road opened to the travelling public by the summer of 2012 and final servicing of the road by 2013. Thank you.

Thank you. I appreciate the recognition of all the questions he threw in that quick question.

Mr. Speaker, we have been working on the realignment of the Giant Mine road. We’ve been working with the Giant Mine Remediation Team over the last while. We want to ensure that whatever option is selected meets their requirements for remediation. We’ve also been talking to various stakeholders, such as the City of Yellowknife, the YK Dene, and we’ve also requested public input on the three options that we put out for consideration. We intend, as the Member indicated, to take one more round of...

Mr. Speaker, we have issuing offices in a number of our communities. We have a mobile issuing office. We have an office here in Yellowknife. They can contact any of those. They can contact our staff. They can go on the website or they can contact my office. We’d be happy to hear any concerns that members of the public at large may have. Thank you.

As usual, we are ahead of the Member.

---Laughter

We’ve already investigated what other jurisdictions are doing. The issues and suggestions he raises are very good ones, of course. It’s something we are considering. We need to do a number of things prior to accepting anything new. We need to overhaul our motor vehicle information system that is currently being used for issuing services. It doesn’t allow us to reconcile and line up with anything like the nature of a kiosk or even hooking up on line. So we anticipate that’s going to be done in the next while. We’d like to have a new system or an...

Of course, the final costs will be dependent on the option that we choose, and the price could be fairly expensive. However, we expect that the funding will be obtained from the GNWT’s Giant Mine Environmental Liability Fund that was previously established, and that’s probably where we’re going to draw the money from. Thank you.

First of all, we haven’t decided on a final route but I think that most people agree that route one is probably the option that meets most of the needs. It reallocates the road away from the mine site, it opens up new land, and it would provide, of course, for a completely realigned highway. That is, right now, probably a favourite. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise today to honour the graduating class of Deh Gah Elementary and Secondary School. It gives me great pleasure to announce the Fort Providence 2011 high school graduates. They are: Ms. Megan Antoine, who will be attending Vancouver Island University; Ms. Veronica Bouvier, who will be attending Dawson Creek College; Ms. Shiana Sabourin, who will be attending Camosun College in Victoria; Ms. Kristy Tanche, who will also be attending Camosun College in Victoria; and Mr. Ben Vandell, who will be attending Vancouver Island University.

Mr. Speaker, I also congratulate the...

As indicated, we reduced the waiting times by approximately 50 percent, so the average now is 21 minutes of waiting. It takes about seven minutes to process the documents. So it’s less than half an hour. We are happy with that. We think if we have electronic support through a kiosk or other means on line, that will improve. That’s where we’re working towards.

The Member is right; I’ve personally gone through the system. I think it took me 15 minutes to go through the system. I also checked with a couple of our staff that indicated -- they went through yesterday -- they waited five minutes. So...