Michael Miltenberger

Mr. Speaker, what is permanent will depend on the circumstances of the particular area. It has to be appropriate, depending on what kind of conservation designation there is outside of the protected area designation. But it does include all the areas on the map.

The Member stated, for example, 1999 Protected Areas Strategy. All the land that’s on that map that is designated to be protected is all the land that is projected to have any kind of conservation designation far into the future. There’s no new land on there. There’s land that’s been identified now since 1999. Some of it is yet to be...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Every community will have a point of presence established from the fibre optic link. Those in Deline will be covered off by microwave towers. The final mile piece becomes a business opportunity for the community or for some business that wants to go in there, it could be NorthwestTel. Deline, I know, has very strong leanings in decision to trying to manage all those and run all the telecommunications and IT requirements in the community for everybody, so that piece is the step that now happens, one step for the presence there and the line goes live in the second quarter...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can give the Member a number for all the land that is current and proposed, including Thaidene Nene and areas that have been worked on since 1999, keeping in mind that the proposed areas in all probability will end up shrinking as the final footprint is determined, but that percentage is 14 percent of the land mass. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Member is correct; there were sections of the line that floated to the surface once the ground melted. The line has been checked from one end to the other and they have identified all the areas and they have worked to ensure that the cable is properly buried. Given that is was a unique sort of process, it was something that wasn’t anticipated but has been rectified at the cost to the contractor. There is a plan that has been put into place over the summer to do that. Thank you.

Yes.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The project started out in its initial conceptual stages with a range somewhere between 65 and I think it was 85 million dollars. As the estimating got finer and the numbers hardened up, it moved to the higher end of the scale. When we did certain things like double the size of the cable from 24 pair to 48 pair to give it a lot of capacity, those types of things added cost as well. But I’ll ask the deputy, Mr. Chair, with your agreement, if he wants to add more detail. Thank you.

Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Speaker, it isn’t very often we can say that weather forecasters were spot-on with their projections; however, this fire season it seems they got it right.

The fire season started very early. In fact, it may be one of the earliest on record. It seemed like the 2014 fire season just spilled over into 2015. There were several hold-over fires from the 2014 season, fires that burned deep over the winter. By early June the numbers and frequency of fire occurrences were record setting. The effect of extended drought was really evident through the South Slave, Deh Cho and North Slave regions. Fire...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The issue of cost of living and the role of the territorial government and the importance of our capital program, I agree with the Member’s comments about that, about the value and the role they play.

I appreciate his comments on the fibre link as well as the Inuvik-Tuk Highway. We will move that project to completion. We will sort through things that need sorting and we will continue on with that. Airport road is in bundle two of the Build Canada Fund. The runway study, there is work being done, I believe, in conjunction with the federal government to look at...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The fiscal reality is what is driving us all and it’s evidenced quite clearly in the capital plan and we have a much longer list of infrastructure projects than we have money. The issue of prioritizing or having to make choices is always before us. So I appreciate the Member’s frustration on some of these requests.

The Willow River, I’m not sure what the opportunities are. I haven’t talked fully to the Minister of Transportation if there are ways, but we’re now faced with political choices and we’ve capital planned and flexed the process and everything has been through...