Michael McLeod

Mr. Speaker, I’d like to speak about the reductions in fuel prices that have taken place this year for communities served by the petroleum products division. These reductions represent significant savings for retail and government customers. During 2009, petroleum product prices charged to retail customers by PPD decreased by an average of more than 25 percent across the Northwest Territories. Gasoline prices have been reduced by no less than 16 cents per litre to as much as 33 cents per litre and heating fuel prices have been reduced by no less than 16 cents per litre and as much as 51 cents...

Mr. Speaker, the deficiencies are going to be all completed by the end of November. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The quick answer, I guess, is that most of the deficiencies have been addressed. The floor is something we are working to expedite the repairs to. The material is on order. We have a contractor that’s going to be coming to the community and we expect it all to be completed by the end of November. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I think all parties involved, all stakeholders, including the municipalities, have recognized that it’s still cheaper to do an analysis of what the gravel requirements per community are for that year and provide a stockpile versus to try to find 20 to 30 million dollars to build a road. It’s still very difficult to do so. I think there is merit to look at the long term and try to work with the communities, and I’ve committed to do so. I’d like to see that move forward, but at this point there is no program and there is no budget that allows us to tap into for gravel source access...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member raised a very healthy list of projects that we are working on in the Northwest Territories with communities to find either improvement through the Access Roads Program to enhance road systems or, in some cases, to try and find a way to lessen the costs to have gravel into the communities.

We don’t, as a department, have a gravel source program per se. We have really tried to reach out and be creative in a number of situations including the Tuk source 177 program where we were able to access the Building Canada Fund and work with some communities such as...

I’ll certainly convey that to our officials, that this building better be done by the end of November. I should point out, though, the building is still usable and the community certainly can take advantage of it. We are very aware that they were very frustrated with some of the issues that came forward, but we’re working very hard to get it all addressed, for the most part. Except for the floor, I think everything’s done and we will ensure that it’s completed by the end of November. We will inform the Member that we want to move forward and have an official opening at some point. We already...

Mr. Speaker, there is currently public highway regulations along this stretch of highway. As I stated earlier, we do not have high volume traffic on this area. We don’t currently have any enforcement on this stretch of road. The Member has invited me to take a look at it. I would be pleased to look at this portion of highway at my earliest convenience. However, having said that, land rovers, other vehicles or ATVs would not be prohibited from travelling on a section of road. It is a public piece of highway. If there are vehicles that are going off the highway and especially ATVs travelling off...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there is a stretch of road from the Yukon border, roughly 14 kilometres that is referred to as the Canol Road. In theory, I guess, the Public Highways Act and Motor Vehicles Act applies to this portion of road. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, that’s a difficult question to answer at this point. We are still doing a lot of work on the Highway No. 7 section, including an engineering assessment and functional design. We’re also doing some of the necessary material preparation, crushing of the kilometre 3 and doing some of the upgrades that are required.

As to doing some actual chipseal, maybe. It’s not something that we’ve decided as of yet. It’s something that we’d like to do. Chipseal, of course, is something that really is dependent on the base and we’d have to be convinced that the road is going to hold up. It will be...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d have to go to the department and confirm, but I believe the project has been deferred until next year. There was some concern, as the season progressed, with the amount of rain that we got and the saturation that the road became. Mr. Speaker, it’s something that we’d still like to move forward on. There were questions raised by the Member on some of the other projects in his riding, including Highway No. 7 that we had to defer. It’s really unfortunate; however, we can’t control the weather, and we’ll commit to having those projects moved forward as soon as possible...