Michael McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’ve been working in the area of the Member’s riding on Highway No. 6 for a couple of years now and there’s been quite a bit of work done in that area. We’ve really been pleased with the cooperation that we’ve had from the community of Fort Resolution. A lot of the work has been focused on reconstruction and chipsealing. There are more dollars identified through some internal reallocation for the next coming year that will focus on more of the same. We expect that some of the work in 2011-2012 will be in the area of kilometre 62 and kilometre 67 around Little Buffalo...

Again the Member has demonstrated his attitude to this bridge by his predictions that it’s going to be past the deadlines that we’ve laid out for him. I’m not sure what he’s pointing at and using to measure this with. We still anticipate that this project is on schedule. The steel is en route. There’s a significant amount of steel that’s coming forward for the superstructure. There is the decking that will be following. Also the ‘A’ pylons. We expect the steel for the superstructure will be in place by March of this coming next calendar year. Things are going well, as much as that might upset...

Mr. Speaker, I am not sure there is a deficit the Member is referring to and if this bridge was clouded in red ink, I am sure the Member has reached into his can of paint of doom and gloom and painted this project that colour on his own.

Mr. Speaker, there is no indication right now that there will be a deficit. The traffic volumes are going to allow for us to accommodate all the debt on this bridge. In fact, if the traffic volumes go up and we start to see more projects come on stream, we will probably have some significant surplus on this that will be applied back to some of the costs...

That again is a difficult commitment to make. We do provide the information to communities, and on many occasions the communities have taken the opportunity to piggyback their initiatives along with what is happening on the highway alongside the community. We’ve had good discussions with some of the communities already about chipsealing and other types of road servicing. We have provided the same courtesy to the community of Fort Resolution and they have taken advantage of it and plan to do some chipsealing in their community. We do provide advice, and technical staff are made available so...

That’s a difficult question as there is a considerable amount of work and investments that are required on Highway No. 6. We only have one year left in our term and that’s basically all I can commit to.

The work should continue. We have a plan. We have the resources identified that will be required. It will be roughly around $15 million to complete all of Highway No. 6 and, of course, that will be proceeding as money is available as the next government comes forward and budgets are identified. There is a lot of work that has been done already that will be used as a basis, the engineering and...

It looks like we are going back to the general discussion, but just as a point of clarity, I didn’t say the $2.5 billion was part of our plan, it’s part of our needs. That’s a little different from our plan. Thank you.

The number that I quoted for all our needs is around $2.5 billion or more, if we started including all the different needs from all the different departments for infrastructure, and that includes the Mackenzie Valley Highway and all the other pieces of infrastructure that have been identified as part of our needs.

As the Member is aware, in the area of deferred maintenance we are certainly playing catch-up. The number for deferred maintenance was quite large. We’ve managed to reduce it by $145 million and we’ll always be working towards reducing it and trying to eliminate it. That might be difficult, of course.

Mr. Chairman, we’ve also managed to reduce our carry-overs from an historic amount of an average of about 35 percent down to 20 percent and some of those would have been in the area of deferred maintenance. I don’t know if we have that actual number at this point. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, the issue of infrastructure deficit and deferred maintenance is of concern right across Canada. We’ve worked with a number of jurisdictions to try to bring that to the attention of the federal government. Within our own budgets and our own initiatives, we’ve targeted deferred maintenance as a priority. Over the last few years we’ve managed to bring that number down by $145 million from a huge challenge with the infrastructure deficit. We’ll continue to do so over the next while. We have targeted some dollars for this coming year and we would expect the next governments to do the...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With me to my right is Mr. Paul Guy, the deputy minister of Public Works and Services; and I also have on my left Laurie Gault, director of Technology Service Centre.