Wally Schumann

Mr. Nagel.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is right. The site bidder tour, I believe in October, was supposed to take place and it didn't. The federal government maintains the rights for the Canol Heritage Trail. This all came through devolution. They kept the right to facilitate the full remediation of this site, and we are working with the federal government on the transfer of land over to the territorial government to make it into a territorial park. But that won't take place until a remediation has taken place. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Do you want to take it? Go ahead.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. On my left is Paul Guy, deputy minister of Public Works, and on my right is Brian Nagel, director of infrastructure and accommodations.

Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following document entitled "NWT Mineral Development Strategy: GNWT Implementation Plan, 2014 2019." Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I'll turn it over to Deputy Minister Guy.

Yes, it was quite exciting actually to see the Deh Cho being a leader in this. As my prior life when I was the Metis president, it's something I strongly believe that we should be doing in the Metis South Slave Region. So getting back to the Member's question, I think developing regional strategies is very important and we need to work on this initiative. Is it going to be part of the land use planning? I believe regionally they want to work on how they're going to move their land use plans for their own self-governments and their own governments and their own regions, but they're going to...

As I've already stated, we already hired two casual maintenance supervisors from the region to monitor the winter road activities. What I could convey to the Member is I would have to look into whose vehicles we're using. We're already employing two people to do that, and I will get back to the Member on where we're getting the vehicles from.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would have to check into this MOU right off the bat, but DOT presently hires two casuals for highway maintenance supervision out of the Sahtu Region for the winter road system.

The Member stated that I guess we're using government vehicles to do the maintenance supervision of the winter road. I can look into it, but I can guarantee, if we already have the units available, why would we go out to contract to rent vehicles for the complete four months of the winter road and add significant costs back onto the taxpayers of the Northwest Territories? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.