Robert Bouchard

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Now I’ll go to the chair of the Standing Committee on Government Operations, Mr. Nadli.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Ms. MacNeil.

All those abstaining, please rise.

That’s it, Mr. Chair. I think we’ve discussed most of the issues tied to the acceleration and our concerns there.

That’s good. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Obviously, as we go through this project, one of the concerns when we first started when we were looking to approval was procurement of northern contractors. Has the department kept up with reporting of how many northern contractors are benefiting from the project, and can we get any of that type of information to date?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I, obviously, had some questions about the highway, the Tuk to Inuvik highway, and the expenditures there. I guess we should be celebrating the fact that we’re going to look to accelerate this project and move forward. It sounds like the project could be moved forward and get done earlier than expected. I’m assuming with that we’re on budget, as well, but the difficulty comes in the fact that we’re asked to approve these budgets, and the Tuk to Inuvik highway was one of those dilemmas.

As a Member from the south, is that a project that we would support or not support? We...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just have a question. Obviously, with the news today about JK and the assessment, have these expenditures already been done or are they being done in the next little while? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise today to talk about a very exciting new office that’s opening in Hay River. Arctic Energy Alliance has announced the opening of a new South Slave regional office in Hay River.

Arctic Energy Alliance is a non-profit society mandated to reduce costs and environmental impacts of energy and utility services in the Northwest Territories, a very big subject that’s been going on through this session.

It’s very exciting that the Arctic Energy Alliance has announced the new person at this office will be Tom Gross, a long-time Hay River resident. This office will be serving...

Along with the comments my colleague just made, I guess, we had the opportunity to meet with NTCL today, and they were obviously concerned about this volume, as well, the fact that I think there are some deficiencies in the marine industry that the Department of Transportation will be looking at and investing money into as opposed to doing it all on highways. Obviously, that’s a concern for them as a company that’s committed to marine, and they see the government investing in highways and roads, basically, supporting the diminishing amount of their market, so I guess they definitely had some...