Wally Schumann

I believe it is very rare. It's unfortunate this incident happened, in this particular case, but I think it's very rare that there are people around the airport that late at night. Typically, I believe the department would probably be telling people if it was closing down, and then they would be making arrangements to get to a hotel or make other arrangements. It's an inopportune situation, but at present the airport is closed between 2:00 and 3:30 in the morning.

Mr. Speaker, the Government of the Northwest Territories made a commitment in its mandate to support mineral exploration and the mining sector by implementing the Mineral Development Strategy.

I rise today to update my colleagues on our progress. Mr. Speaker, the Mineral Development Strategy has five pillars: creating a competitive edge; establishing a new regulatory environment; enhancing Aboriginal engagement and capacity; promoting sustainability; and enriching workforce development and public awareness.

In our work to create a competitive edge for mining in the NWT, we have placed incentives...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The department hasn't taken a determination on this point yet. We are looking out for ideas and stuff. We are currently looking at other jurisdictions, as I have said, across Canada before we roll this out. We will probably be conducting a review and undertaking an analysis on a royalty regime across Canada.

The department is actually conducting research right now on how we are going to move forward. I don't think anything is locked down because we are going to have to go through consultation, public engagement. We are going to have to go in front of standing committee. There are a number of things that we are going to have to do that are going to guide this document as we move forward. We are welcome to any suggestions.

The department regularly evaluates the condition of the. We have our maintenance crews that travel up and down the highway daily to gather information daily. They give us feedback on that. We have, as I said, our test sections that are out there, but to get out for safety is the number one priority of the transportation system in the Northwest Territories. We use a number of initiatives to reach out to people in the Northwest Territories and people visiting NWT, as I think and believe the Member talked yesterday in the House about how we’re going to get our message out there, be it Twitter...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As anyone who knows anyone who has driven this stretch of highway in the last few years know, it’s a very challenging section of highway in the Northwest Territories; probably one of the most challenging. Due to the permafrost degradation and stuff that’s happening out there and the melting and disturbances that are happening on that section of highway, the department had to reach out to the federal government a number of years ago to get some research dollars to have a look at this and develop a program and have test sections on this highway. I think we have four...

The P3 concept is probably a little more challenging one. I commit to the Member that we could sit down with Finance and figure out a way moving forward, but as all Members know in this House, with federal treasury money, there’s a different set of rules on procurement around that and we’re going to have to probably sit down not with just myself and the Finance Minister but with the federal government if there’s a way forward to implement this into a possibility with P3 projects.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As all Members know, we are mandated in the 18th Legislative Assembly to do this. We spoke about this in the House before. This is something that is very important to me, as I came from the manufacturing sector. The department is doing a bunch of preliminary work on how we are going to bring this strategy forward, and when the time comes, I will inform the House when the strategy will be implemented. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I have announced earlier in the House, during this session, all the tourism programs that we have. We have the regional development workshops that we have had in different regions. We just recently had one in the Deh Cho, which pulled a bunch of stakeholders together from the Members’ riding. It was well attended by all Aboriginal governments and groups from the region. We do have an economic development person in every region, to help facilitate tourism. We can sit down and have a look at how we are going to do that. There are a number of different opportunities, different pots of money from...

I thank the Member for this question because as the proposed Revolving Fund moving forward this would allow us the opportunity under that to have this type of decision come forward and have the airport open 24 hours.