Wally Schumann

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So everyone is focusing on the Community Access Program, but when you look at the broader as a whole, transportation, what have we been doing, you look at the BCP money that we spread out across the Northwest Territories. It is spread out amongst the regions, amongst the communities, and in the particular Member's riding we have just done community access roads Jean Marie and Nahanni Butte. So those are the types of programs where some of this capital money goes, and it is spread across the Northwest Territories, not just some mega projects. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I guess I can go into a little story about this situation. There was a place built there in 2000, where the Member is referring to, just off the access of the Dempster Highway. This was built in an area where a lot of drainage was a problem. The Department of Housing got involved; the Department of Transportation got involved. We moved the particular residents out of this area at the two departments' expense and relocated them. Another individual has now since moved into that location, knowing that all the particular problems were there. Along the course of that timeline, a couple of culverts...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The reason we are doing the P3 business case, as I've said, moving forward is it is going to give us a better idea on construction costs on the construction of this road now that the route has been determined, which took a number of years to get that figured out. This is just going to give us a better idea of costing of the project. Once that is done, then we will probably sit down, no different from the Whati road, and see which makes the best case; national infrastructure process, which is the federal government hasn't clearly laid out the rules around that yet, or a...

All that is probably going to depend on what is going to happen with the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board. We have no control over what they are doing. The other thing that we are looking at doing is we are going to put out a request for qualifications on this process for this road. That should be coming out shortly. We don't want to get ahead of the environmental process.

As I made a comment in my earlier statement, we brought a number of Sahtu residents to Yellowknife in particular last year for an agriculture conference; this is some of the stuff that we heard there that we put in towards our agriculture strategy. I don't think we need to have another conference already to do that. If the Member from the Sahtu would like us to work closely with the residents of the Sahtu, we can have our superintendent reach out to him and see how we can facilitate that.

That is a Nunavut project. I am not the Minister of Transportation for Nunavut. I would have to check with the colleagues in Nunavut. As far as I am concerned, that is a Nunavut project, and I don't have any of that information.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thank the Member for the question on Growing Forward 2, because this is an important initiative that the Government of the Northwest Territories has been working on in collaboration with the federal government on bringing agriculture to the Northwest Territories. For the past five years, we have spent approximately $6 million on this program in the Northwest Territories and invested it directly into NWT agriculture. I thank him for that.

In the upcoming season, I suspect that I would have to get that directly from the department, but I am assuming that it is probably...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That is kind of a unique question. We have committed to working with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources to get all the information so we can make a fair decision moving forward on this corridor for the residents of the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As I had the opportunity in committee to explain some of this stuff, the department is looking at all aspects of costing out of revenues and expenses moving forward. There are a number of business opportunities that have also come forward since the purchase of these assets, and we believe that, if these come to fruition, it will help spread the cost out and keep the fuel prices down to where they are, close to the present levels, subject to the markets on the fuel in the open market.

I am going to make it quite clear: I see the significant value of this program. It is under my portfolio. It is very important for us to bring mining to the Northwest Territories. We have a line item of $400,000 currently in this program. I have said I have made a commitment to the Members that, during the life of this Assembly, I will look at ways to try to increase that to bring more economic opportunities to the residents of the Northwest Territories.