Tom Beaulieu

The plan is to reconstruct the highway from 20 to 38. I believe that takes us to the chipsealing being finished right to Fort Liard. Also the intention is to try to do some resurfacing in some of the heavy truck areas between Fort Liard and the Nahanni Butte turn and concentrating on an area from kilometre 111 to 130 and a complete reconstruction of a narrow part of the highway that is around 169, 170. Thank you.

There are two things that we have to look at before we can make any commitments, before I can make any commitments on a forum that is operational requirements. Number one, the fact that the majority of our civil servants are in the union, so we would have to discuss this with the union, and also, it becomes very important for operational requirements that all the positions that are needed in the key times and areas are there, and I couldn’t make a commitment to do that without checking those two things first, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.

I don’t have the information of how many of those jobs are shared, like how many positions in the GNWT are half time or three-quarter positions. However, we do try to accommodate most requests for a flexible work day, compressed work weeks and so on. So, we do try to accommodate individuals in the various ways with time, and I can get that information on the amount of positions that are actually advertised as a job sharing position, as a part-time position and a second job is advertised with that same PY as another job sharing position. I didn’t request that particular information. I just...

When the highway is closed and we open up for our convoys, everyone that is at the convoy or waiting, we’ll use Fort Providence as an example, everyone that’s waiting there gets to go.

Now, I believe that we may have had situations where there were people en route with essential goods between Enterprise and Fort Providence and that we didn’t wait. We opened and closed the convoy before they were able to get to Fort Providence and, due to safety reasons, were unable to go further than that. What we’re going to do is we’re going to work with the people at the weigh scales and the industry that...

I think maybe I didn’t want to be misunderstood who we are… We’ll reach out to some of the key grocery stores, for sure, and then some of the other things will be expanded upon and we can reach out. But there’s always that fear that we will miss someone and that may become an issue.

What we’re asking for, if we made contact, is maybe to provide them for…because we would like to have regular contact beyond just the one contact, to let them know that the highway is going to close. But to try to set up a system where, if there’s going to be anticipation that the highway may close, maybe to provide...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The amount of kilometres is the way in which we will be budgeting the project. However, the project and the cost and the payments are based on the amount of embankment that is hauled by the project company. What we were anticipating is to haul 67 percent of the embankment on the construction of the Inuvik Tuk Highway at this point in time. However, we were able to haul just slightly over 60 percent of the embankment and that caused us to lapse the $4.8 million that is lapsed. We have a distance of about 55 kilometres to cover next construction season. We budgeted that...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Where it is possible to hang art in our new buildings, we will do that. We have been working with the NWT Arts Society. You are seeing some of the screens with the art on them at the airport here and in the main office building in Inuvik. So we’ll continue working with them to put what’s appropriate up in that new building.

That was a major complaint, as the Member indicates, when we were in Fort Liard. We are going to also be doing some dust suppression in the areas where they were considered to have the greatest amount of issues with dust on Highway No. 7.

I cannot set up meetings for the federal officials. However, we can ask, so I will have the deputy minister from the Department of Transportation, GNWT, contact the officials that are responsible for dredging all rivers up here, mainly Hay River, and try to set up a meeting in Hay River with the federal officials responsible.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have written my letter to the federal government on dredging the Hay River. I have not received their response. Thank you.