Wally Schumann

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It is a commonly used area. As I walk it every day when I come to work, I have crossed the highway and I come up the side of the highway and then take the secondary road to the Legislative Assembly. As I have stated in the House yesterday, we are working on this. We've met with the City of Yellowknife, user groups from Niven Lake, and we will continue to meet with them, and, as of even recently today, I've mentioned to another Member from the City of Yellowknife that at our next meeting I will gladly invite all the MLAs from the City of Yellowknife to participate in...

During the review of our agriculture strategy, there has definitely been some challenges that were identified in this and one of them was the sale of and safe sale of locally produced meat. We are working on it. We are working with a number of departments, Health and Social Services in particular, to ensure that locally produced food can be sold to the public safely in the Northwest Territories, and I can update the Members now. The Department of Health and Social Services is reviewing its Public Health Act and regulations to address these gaps related to the food inspection, so hopefully by...

What I can do is commit to provide updates on the Mackenzie Valley Highway project as they become available to us. I will commit to providing them to the Members as they come in.

The federal government has informed us that the review of the Mackenzie Valley Highway project proposal under the new Building Canada Fund national infrastructure component has been temporarily suspended until the federal government makes a decision on phase two of the capital infrastructure money, their long-term plan. Phase two planning fund is expected to be announced early next year in communicating the temporary suspension of the Mackenzie Valley Highway project.

The federal government indicated the desire to align such projects with the Minister of Infrastructure and communities' mandate...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can commit to having a look at how we can increase this, but as I said, looking at our fiscal situation that we are in, in light of the next budget cycle year, we can have a look at how we do it. It doesn't meet the definition of forced growth, so I can't use that to increase it. But it would take all 19 Members of the Assembly to help straighten out our fiscal situation where we can, like I say, put money into small communities in this type of initiative.

No, I have not had this discussion with my Cabinet colleagues or the Finance Minister. The discussions we have had are how do we live within the fiscal means that we have based on revenues that we have and expenditures. That is the only discussions I have had around money.

No.

Laughter

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I've said, we have to include everybody. We're not going to exclude everybody. We have to involve everybody in this process and make sure it's done in a fair and equitable manner and everyone has an opportunity to have input. I appreciate the Member's comments that he'd like us to commit to doing it right away, but there has to be a process in place where everyone can have their input and make sure it's the best decision moving forward.

As I've said, we've worked closely with various groups on this. The developers actually paid for the improvements that were made on this section of highway this year, as it become on him that he would pay for this. We will continue to work with the City of Yellowknife and all user groups. That's the best way forward with this.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I'm not well-versed on the whole thing around this, I'll have to take this question as notice. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.