Wally Schumann

Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the honourable Member from Thebacha, that Bill 35, Supply Chain Management Professional Designation Act, be read for the third time. Mr. Speaker, I request a recorded vote. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I've said in this House over the last couple of days, first of all, we moved up the sailing season to try to alleviate the situation. We've been working with the fuel supplier, and now we have these fires that have started in Alberta which throw some of those plans into jeopardy, where we'll have to go back and rejig this. As I've updated the House today, we're working with our fuel supplier and looking at trucking things to Hay River in the short term, depending on how long it takes CN Rail to ramp their system back up and get their services available to Hay River...

I will have to find out exactly what spec of gravel we are using here, but I suspect that it is probably the same stuff that we are crushing and using at a lot of different locations around the ferry system. Another thing in our licence through the Gwich'in Land and Water Board is that they told us to keep the gravel to a minimum, and that is part of our licence. That is one of the reasons that we aren't stockpiling gravel in that region.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There are a couple of things around this, and we have talked about the river levels in, particularly, the MLA's riding, how it has fluctuated, and then some flooding, then it's not flooding. We have low water.

The gravel landings are closely monitored to keep an eye on the situation, but to update this House, so that all Members know, we have to be in compliance, mostly, with our water licence use, which is given out by the Gwich'in Land and Water Board. We have to comply by that licence. That is the Member's riding; that's his people, the GTC, their land and water board...

Yes, the Member is right. I got a picture sent to me today of the trestle actually burning to the ground there. Actually, the fire was so hot that it warped the railroad, so there's going to be significant work that is going to have to go into this, and we're in constant contact with CN, and keep updated on how they're going to address this situation.

As far as the fuel goes, we've already got hold of the fuel supplier, and they have activated their fuel response team. They reassure us that they've got a trucking solution already put into place to get the fuel to Hay River to try to meet our...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As we talked about this yesterday in the House, and I think this is timely to have this question anyway to inform everyone what's going on. The Alberta government has reassured us that they are in full response of this fire. They have their own incident management team managing the fires in Alberta. They are well aware of the situation that's going on there, and I think the whole country is quite concerned about what is going on down there. I have talked to an ENR minister in his department to get an update on all activities on what's going on, and the Department of ENR...

Mr. Speaker, our government is following through on its mandate commitment to strengthen connections with our public and private sector partners to secure funding for strategic infrastructure projects across the Northwest Territories. Investments in our public highway systems help to connect communities, improve public safety, ensure the efficient delivery of essential goods and services, support tourism, increase our resiliency to climate change, reduce the cost of living, and create training and employment opportunities. Investments also help attract interest from industry in the exploration...

Our department and our officials are in constant contact with the City of Yellowknife with what is happening at the visitor information centre. One of the things that has happened since we shut down the Northern Frontier Visitors Centre and moved it over to city hall. I took a lot of questions in the House about how that is going to work out. Things with the city have moved along quite well.

One of the things that has happened since we have closed down the visitors centre is the number of tourists who actually went to the city's tourists information centre has almost doubled. The department was...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Normally I credit the Member for doing his homework, but there were three designs, actually, that we have received on this. I'm just teasing him. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We received three concept designs as part of this planning process, and through that, we want to go to the next step to develop a schematic design over the summer in 2019, but this is going to largely depend on some of the technical work that has been recently wrapped up on this building. We are waiting to hear back on these geotechnical and structural reports. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Department of Infrastructure did not pay for any off-specification fuel that we received, and the supplier arranged for the recovery of the off-specification fuel at their own expense and took it back.