Wally Schumann

Thank you, Mr. Chair. First of all, on the crosswalk right outside here by the Assembly, by the Nova Hotel, that should all be installed by November 1st. The crosswalk should be put into place. We're in ongoing discussions with the City of Yellowknife on them taking over this section of highway, but we are also trying with the City of Yellowknife to figure out a sidewalk along this section of highway, and those discussions are ongoing. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Member is right. The Buffalo River bridge is almost completed. The tender for the Hay River bridge will be coming out shortly for its procurement for the rehabilitation of that bridge. Frank Channel bridge has been deferred. We are thinking about having another look at that after we went out to public consultation, and there were a number of concerns about us rehabilitating that bridge and having a full canopy on it as the way it is right now; it is a bottleneck of the whole system of anything coming north of Yellowknife, and we are having another look at it. I think...

Mr. Speaker, we are on the road with our consultation on this. We went to the regional centres, but this initiative that we put forward, we have an extremely important Web portal with interaction where anyone from within the industry or the Northwest Territories can interact with the department and answer a number of questions and put their thoughts forward. They have the mail-in option. They can email us. They can phone the department and we'll have someone discuss these options with them. That's our commitment, and we will continue to do that, Mr. Speaker.

I'm not aware of a requirement to replace any pier on the Deh Cho Bridge. This bridge has been functioning well since it opened in 2012, and as far as I'm concerned there's no need for that. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The cost of this preventative work is actually covered by various bridge capital projects. It's ongoing preventative bridge maintenance across our system, and it's there to extend the life of our bridge assets.

Mr. Speaker, today I would like to recognize Charles Thornton, Ph.D., P.E., from Easton, Maryland; Larry Grimms from Haymarket, Virginia; Darrell Beaulieu, president and CEO of Denendeh Investments; Margaret Gorman, chief operating officer, Denendeh Investments; and Dave Ramsay, director of Denendeh Investments. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following two documents entitled "Tabled Document 456-18(2), NWT Oil and Gas Annual Report 2016" and "Tabled Document 457-18(2), Northwest Territories Geological Survey Strategic Plan 2017-2022." Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We are always committed to improving our communications, as I said in this House on a number of occasions, to update residents and tourists in particular on this section of road in the wintertime, which is, as I've mentioned in the House, how the numbers are increasing in the use of this road, winter operators and general public who also use this highway. We will continue to work on our communications plan.

We have our digital signage that's out at the entrance of Highway No. 4; that will be placed there again once the season gets going. We have Twitter. We use radio. We use our website to give...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We continue to do extensive safety and structural improvements on Highway No. 4. As most Members of this House know, we have invested roughly $2 million per year on ongoing reconstruction of this section of road.

To update Members, this year we have completed road widening, structural strengthening, drainage improvements, resurfacing. Application of chipseal and guard rail installation were needed on kilometre 46 to 49. We have also, like I said, done impressive amounts of chipseal, of overlay, this year from kilometre 7 to 22, along with our ongoing patching of potholes...

I'm not aware of this concern. The bridge is built within normal sloping operating grades and, I suspect anyone who has a Class 1 driver's licence operating should have the skills to navigate the slope of that bridge.