Tom Beaulieu

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The funds were approved and we had presented a plan to the federal government and the plan was approved, but the money for the plan and how the money is going to roll out from the federal government has yet to be determined. Unfortunately, we are still in the process of negotiating when and how the money will flow. We don’t want to spend the money up front if that’s not the way the federal government is hoping to advance the money to us, so we’re going to talk to them and then determine exactly what is acceptable and when the money starts to flow, and then hopefully...

During our meeting with the leadership when we were meeting on the Mackenzie Valley road, the leadership had indicated to us that they were going to provide a proposal to us, a proposal that will be presented to the federal government and other departments in the federal government so that they can provide some funding through various avenues. One of the things that the leadership was very focused on was to try to access some quarries and that they wanted to build some of the road using some access money from the federal government and some money from the various other agencies and departments...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. At this time what we have completed is a proposal. We recognize that this is something that’s been in the works for many, many years. This year, prior to March 31st, we as a government, with the Premier and Minister responsible for infrastructure, Minister McLeod, were able to put together an initial proposal that we forwarded to the federal government. We have received a response. The federal government is looking for some more detail, some more technical detail, maybe closer, better estimates on what the actual costs could be. So we’ve received that letter and we are...

Mr. Speaker, certainly I will look into that. I will talk to the department, and the department, in turn, will contact the regional office out of Simpson and confirm any issues with the road. If there are serious issues with that road, then we’ll repair it. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There are three main pieces of work happening in the area that the Member speaks of. On Highway No. 7 we are resurfacing and putting new chipseal down from zero to kilometre 20, and the Member knows exactly where that is. Also, on Highway No. 1, we are going to apply new chipseal. I believe there was some chipseal down. We’re going to apply new chipseal from kilometre 395 to 411. Also, again on Highway No. 1 just as it flows into the Member’s riding, from kilometre 188 to kilometre 206 we’re going to resurface and put on new chipseal. Thank you.

Like I said, we do get 700 to 800 applicants to our summer students. We hire around 300. We’re on target to do that again. We tried to do a fairly even split between Yellowknife, where the majority of the public service is, and out there in the regions and the communities. We do have 100 or so competitions at one time because we can’t run all the vacancies at one time. All the positions to recruit, we cannot run them all at one time. They’re at varying stages. Some of them may be at the offer stage, some are at the appeals stage, some are just becoming vacant and so on, so there is a constant...

The Member is correct; our fines are very low. So this is the reason we are increasing them, more than doubling them from what we have of $115 to $280. Also, in addition to that, we are going to step up the advertising and campaign of making people aware of how dangerous it is to do distracted driving. We know figures show in reality, distracted driving is more dangerous than impaired driving. We are going to have to be as severe with distracted driving as we are with impaired driving. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’ve had the regional superintendent from Transportation meet with the chief and council. They wish to meet and discuss the hours of operation of the Lafferty ferry. Also, we’ve looked at what hours are possible for the operation that we have and the employees we have on the ferry. Thank you.

The Department of Public Works is responsible for providing fuel, heating fuel to communities where there are no other individuals that find it feasible to provide that product to the people. So in communities where our department is providing fuel, we do that and it’s just at a cost basis. There is no actual increase to the charge of fuel other than just to get it into the community and provide it to the individuals. We do have some charge that’s in the Stabilization Fund. That is something that I had indicated earlier that that type of stabilization fund is then used to support the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We do this in a couple of ways. For communities that are under the petroleum products division where we are providing fuel, we only charge to the individuals the cost of the fuel plus a commission plus the transportation of the fuel. In situations where we have, in the middle of winter, a sharp increase like we had seen last February, we use the Stabilization Fund that we use to run the PPD as a division to make sure that we keep the prices stable until after the winter season, and we use up some of that Stabilization Fund in order to do that.