Robert Bouchard

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Last night the community of Hay River had another meeting about the school swap. This one was at the Ecole Boreale with the parents, teachers, some students and some residents of Ecole Boreale, and as well, some regular members of the public.

The people there indicated that they did not support the swap. They felt that Ecole Boreale was going to get a benefit, but they didn’t want to see that benefit on the backs of other students in the community. The other reason that they didn’t support the idea is Ecole Boreale has ownership to that school. They’ve been there since...

Mr. Speaker, the importance of these roads is obvious. In the beginning, getting them open and then keeping them open as long as we can is very key. That’s the success of the road.

So I guess the question to the Minister is – I also questioned last week about the maintenance – are we continuing to maintain these roads currently or are we shut down on maintenance and letting the weather take its course?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to ask the Minister of Transportation some questions about the Mackenzie Valley road. He had a Minister’s speech about it today, and last week I was asking questions on the maintenance of the road.

My first question for the Minister is: What is the current status of the Mackenzie Valley road? Is it closed to nighttime only or have we been able to keep it open all week?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I know they’ve put some deadlines on the DEA, and obviously, I look forward to hearing what happens in Hay River tonight. I apologize, I can’t make it, but I guess the question is that, going forward, we know that there are some dates coming up in March that are very important and key.

When will the Minister get back to us on these numbers and on the decision going forward on this issue? Thank you.

I would like the Minister to also include some of that analysis of the costs, I guess the cost of the whole process. What have they put into legal fees, what are they going to have to put into the school swap? We know the cost, $28 million for both schools in both communities, $13 million for Hay River.

Would the Minister commit to giving us a full analysis of what the government has spent on this whole fiasco, I guess?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Like my colleague, last night I attended a meeting on the Hay River school swap. I’d like to thank the DEA for hosting this meeting; it has been a meeting long time coming. The community was glad to hear all the information.

I can probably sum up the message that should be sent to the Department of Education and maybe my colleagues across the way. From Facebook, a comment from one of my constituents: “It’s a bad idea, just a quick fix, but it puts more students out without a gym. They should just pony up the dough and build a French school gym.”

The whole concept of the...

Then I guess the other information I was looking for is how does the driver inform this? If you become a commercial driver of a vehicle… If you all of a sudden become a driver of a commercial vehicle, do you know… Like, I wouldn’t know unless I was reading this amendment here, but the average person driving a commercial vehicle doesn’t know when there’s an infraction to contact the owner that the infraction has happened. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a couple of questions. The first one came up during hearings. It was the liability on the commercial vehicles of the owner of the vehicle and the responsibility of the driver to report incidents to the owner of the vehicle and the liability that that entails. I was just wondering if the department has had a closer look at that, if they’ve looked at the liabilities and how the owner is supposed to be contacted when there is an incident with the vehicle that they own.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a question on this Yellowknife general purpose office building, I understand this is money to continue the project. The project is ahead of schedule. I am assuming, and maybe if I could just get clarification, we’re on budget as well.

Obviously, our Hay River DEA and the French school were concerned about the repercussions now.

Now that the DEA has said that they’re not interested in signing the MOU, what will the Department of Education do going forward, what are the expectations of Cabinet and what are the expectations of the GNWT to go forward? Thank you.