Michael McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With me I have Paul Guy, deputy minister of Public Works and Services.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Once again, we are very pleased to hear that the Member has recognized that the capital process is improved and it’s working a lot better. The New Deal, of course, has changed the way we do business and our relationship with the community governments. It’s given the communities more responsibility and it’s also given them a lot more freedom and flexibility to invest in projects that they see fit. This was an issue that we heard for many years historically, about the inability of communities to decide what was their priority.

At the time of the New Deal coming into play...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to thank the Member for his comments. He raised a number of issues across the North and, of course, in his riding. The capital process in the last while has changed and we are starting to certainly see the benefits of using this process that requires us to follow a number of steps. We are quite satisfied that the changes are positive. The capital process and the capital budget have been really challenged in the last couple of years as we went forward to deliver many projects across the North. A lot of the regional centres have seen fairly large expenditures and...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon. I’m here with the Honourable Michael Miltenberger to discuss the 2011-2012 Capital Estimates of the Government of the Northwest Territories.

As lead Minister for infrastructure, I was tasked with revising the Government of the Northwest Territories capital planning process, with the aim of improving how we plan for, acquire, deliver and maintain infrastructure necessary to deliver required programs and services for our residents.

The changes we have implemented as a result ensure that all major projects are properly planned and costs are accurately...

Thank you. I just returned from a federal/provincial/territorial conference in Halifax and we did discuss a number of issues related to Transportation, including a strategic plan for all of Canada, including the Northwest Territories. We have a number of our officials that are leading the research and development of planning in this area and we certainly have all agreed that the future is going to be a lot different from the environment that we’ve dealt with in the past and our infrastructure is going to have to adapt to that. We had agreement from the new federal infrastructure Minister to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We recently visited the communities in the Member’s riding and the concerns he’s raising today were brought forward by a number of residents of Nahendeh. Of course, the condition of Highway No. 7 has been a concern for this government and all the people that travel it. It’s a piece of infrastructure that we inherited some time ago from the federal government. It was constructed during the Hire North days and the construction code for roads were a little different than they are today.

We recognize that it needs some attention. It is a concern. It’s an aging piece of...

Mr. Speaker, if the Member hasn’t recognized yet, the leaders provide direction to our Department of Transportation. We, of course, take any issues that affect the safety of our travelling public very seriously. It is a priority. As the Member is aware, we need to engage all the Members of this House as we move forward. We have already had a motion in this House defeated. We have to make sure that it takes into consideration all the different issues that may be addressed under distracted driving. It is going to take something that we want to move forward carefully. We want to make sure we get...

Mr. Speaker, if the Member had attended committee meetings he would have known that we had informed the committee that we plan to move forward on this piece of legislation. We are right now looking at as to how comprehensive a distracted driving legislation policy document should be. We are also looking at recommendations made to allow for municipalities to opt out. This is difficult, of course, so we have to look at it from a number of different assessments. However, we would like to see something in place for consideration by committee and this House sometime in the new year. Thank you.

The strategy that we have used to determine which roads need attention has been developed by our engineers. We certainly can ask them if they want to relocate some investment. However, that would be asking us to move away from areas that we think have issues with safety and vision and they may have some difficulty doing that without increased funding in this area. We would have to be relocating dollars that are targeted for specific areas. We can certainly discuss that and see what possibilities there are, but I would say it’s unlikely.

I have no control on what the Member is going to label his road...

---Laughter

The reality is, Mr. Speaker, this road is going to require probably a complete reconstruction. We’ve been really focused on trying to develop a plan that will do that. However, the challenge is that there has been excessive rainfall in that area. It has contributed to eroding, it has contributed to culvert failures, flooding, things of that nature and it has forced us to redirect our efforts from reconstruction on a portion of the road that has been targeted, to trying to deal with some of the crisis situations that...