Wally Schumann

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. To inform the Members of this House, because this decision was made quite a while ago to accelerate the ice road there and keep the winter ferry going as long as we could until the road was up to capacity was made in 2013, I believe, 2014. They began to do the accelerated construction of the ice road crossing. This was mainly around the energy concerns for the community of Inuvik and the low volumes that possibly shut down the kill well at the time. A propane mixture was going to have to be introduced to get through this dry spell of the well until something else was...

The Member brought this up when we were in the briefing on REDI. At that point, if I said, that these are all worthy considerations that can be considered by Members of Cabinet, and I recommended at that time that he can bring them forward in a letter to us, and we can be able to look at those initiatives moving forward, but REDI initiative is not the place to have these discussions.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. These are discussions that we’re going to have like I said with the manufacturing strategy. One thing I can say around procurement: when we go out and have our conversations with members of the public service that do delivery of procurement, there is this discussion around the manufacturers in the Northwest Territories. We highlight who are the manufacturers, which products are available to them, and which communities they are based in, and we are continually educating people within the department on the manufacturers in the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Speaker...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Based on the Member's statement today and from when he was in committee last week, I think there is a disconnect from how his vision of REDI is and what our vision of REDI is. REDI is a fact-based information based on risks and potential of resource and energy development in the Northwest Territories, and that is how we are taking part in engaging the public in the NWT.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I won’t be able to give you an exact draft timeline because it depends on the challenges and conversations that we have with the manufacturers and the needs that we are going to need to help address them to be able to deliver a product to the Government of the Northwest Territories and residents of the NWT in a fashion that is economically beneficial to them and also to the residents of the Northwest Territories. It’s pretty hard to have a timeline until we have the discussions with the manufacturers on the challenges going forward. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. No, I’m not aware of the prompt payment program if we have one under P3. P3 falls under the Minister of Finance, but we’ll be glad to look at any ideas that Members want to share to help alleviate the situation for businesses that have done the work and completed on time and done a successful job. If there’s a hold-up on payment, we would certainly have a look at anything to help facilitate that. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, I’m well aware of the department’s mandate to do prompt payment. I believe most of the payments, not always because there are always circumstances around every challenging one that comes forward but we’re supposed to pay within 20 days of receipt of an invoice and that’s what we will continue to do as a department. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I regularly talk to my counterparts in the Yukon and Nunavut on a broad range of issues. With this one in particular, I am sure we are going to have more conversations, particularly with Nunavut, as they are a little bit more remote and face more challenges than the Yukon and very similar to us. We will continue to press the federal government, I imagine, all on the same page moving forward, in particular, possibly as soon as the next FTP meeting around transportation.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As all Members know, safety of our passengers and our pilots is the number one concern of the Government of Northwest Territories when it comes to air travel. This oneapproachfitsall for the regulatory change does not work well for the government of the Northwest Territories and particularly the airline industry on this approach. We are going to work very closely with our federal counterparts on ways to address the unique needs of our operators and our airports in the Northwest Territories, and we will hopefully do this through appropriate amendments to the federal...

Yes, we did. We had some contract work this year with a number of our vessels, and we went out and did that. We also did some maintenance work at the shipyard on the Canadian coast guard vessels that were stationed out of Hay River, and got them under way for their sailing season. We also did some work on some third party vessels in the Hay River shipyard.