Tom Beaulieu

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Back in February, as the Member knows, I wrote a letter, sent a letter to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and asked that the federal government consider putting money into the port, dredging the port of Hay River, and indicated it was vital to the Territories for resupply of fuel and food to some of the communities. I did not get a response, so I’m not sure that I should be drafting another letter. I know that the public service Department of Transportation has been speaking to their counterparts about the issue, but it’s clearly something that is a federal...

Yesterday when we were meeting with Priorities and Planning, we committed that we would give the Regular Members updates on a weekly basis as we move through this process. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have a legal contract with the operator. The operator has a process in the contract to make a claim. We then have to determine whether or not we think that is a valid claim, and we are going through the process. We were advised on August 19th that they had run into some issues and had indicated that they would be making a claim on the contract, and we started working with the contractor to see if they had a legitimate claim and how the claim would be broken down from year to year. Thank you.

The ferry sits for 10 minutes. That’s the call of the captain. The captain makes that call. The captain makes the call, but he’s given little opportunity to potential oncoming traffic. So just coming there and picking up vehicles and going back immediately, they sometimes are just missing vehicles by a little bit. If they have room on their ferry, they wait for 10 minutes to ensure that nobody is coming, and if no one comes then they will proceed, and if someone comes they will have benefitted from the ferry captain making the decision to wait for the time period that they do wait, which is 10...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. The department works with the ferry operator to continue to try to improve the landings of both ferries at all times. There may be years when we have dumped a lot of gravel to try to secure and make the landings harder and so on and then they wash out. It is something that we constantly work at to try to make the ferry landings safe and even possible. We work on it all the time. So, if there is a permanent solution that is out there, we are also trying to find a permanent solution as well.

We have not talked about moving in and starting to go into an area where the federal government is responsible. Currently, the federal government is going through elections. We can raise that with the federal government for them to take responsibility. If this Assembly decides we need to take over Fisheries and Oceans’ responsibilities, then that’s another discussion that would have to be had by all of us and the governments responsible, the federal government. I don’t think that’s a discussion we can have here and make a decision to dredge it once and then the problem is solved. It’s an...

It is a federal responsibility and the Department of Transportation is not in a position to take over areas that are federal responsibility. We can’t just move in and start to fund areas that are a federal responsibility.

Right now we go through a process. When a department from the federal government is devolved to the Government of the Northwest Territories, or any government for that matter, there is a process. If that responsibility devolves from the GNWT, then it would become a GNWT responsibility and it would come with money and personnel. Just to go in and take over federal...

We’ve had a transfer from the federal government. The federal government devolved the Department of Transportation to the GNWT. If we put in a part of the Building Canada Plan and put something in there that was actually federal responsibility, the federal government would remove it. So it would be foolish to go through that process of adding in a project that is clearly federal responsibility just to have the government remove it and we would have to plan on replacing that with something else. Thank you.

I have not had a conversation with the federal government, the departments responsible for dredging the Hay River. Thank you.

Of course, we wish to evaluate the validity of the claim prior to dissolution of this Assembly; however, if that was to not happen, we’d have to follow the contract to see what provisions are in the contract right now and how much latitude we would have to be able to move forward with a claim and make sure that the work on the Inuvik-Tuk Highway would continue. Thank you.