Wally Schumann

I am not so sure that the plan specifically speaks to exactly what our infrastructure deficit is, but those conversations are always at the forefront of all of our conversations, be it with industry players, the government, or other levels of government, be it provincial or territorial.

At the same time, when I was down there, we took the opportunity to meet with some industry players and financiers, again, to explain what is going on in the Northwest Territories and clearly lay out what we are trying to do in the NWT, particularly around infrastructure, be it the Taltson Hydro Expansion...

Our staff clearly worked on this with all of the staff right across the country. It is clearly lined up with what we are trying to do in the Northwest Territories, and when I am out there speaking on behalf of the Government of the Northwest Territories and the residents, particularly around the mineral sector, we are pretty much a leader on a lot of stuff in this country. Our new Mineral Resources Act is going to be something that is not seen anywhere else in this country. Our government predecessors to our Assembly came forth with the resource revenue sharing, which is clearly not adopted by...

Roughly, from the department's numbers that I got from them, it costs $70,000 to construct just a regular outhouse. I suspect, for us to do a heated facility, as we have talked about in this House here and the challenges in the location that it is, it would probably be double that. We would be spending something like $140,000, not counting to run power out to this type of facility. We will work through this through our winter strategy and try to come up with something here before next winter about how we can try to rectify this. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I can reassure the Member that we have already sent a contractor out there to clean this up. This has come up in this Assembly every year at this time of year, and we have to make it quite clear. This is a difficult situation for us. These things are isolated and remote. There is no power at these locations, and we spend a significant amount of money on this. We spend roughly $50,000 annually to clean these things up in the off-season, and we could probably spend that a week, if we had to really get after this thing, but we don't have the money to do this. The department is certainly going to...

Currently, there is no new money attached to this strategy.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This is something that we have been working on, but to update this House, we have actually shared this with the Standing Committee on Economic Development and Environment on February 15th for comment. Once it has been looked at by committee and responded to, we will be working on finalizing the strategy. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We had the Nunavut-NWT Chamber of Mines actually attend PDAC this year. They were there for this announcement, and they were clearly supportive of what is in this documentation. There were a number of resource players from the Northwest Territories at PDAC. I had a number of side conversations with them, and they are quite happy with what is in this document, I think, as a country, as a whole, and how we are going to try to promote this industry and make us a global leader in this area of production in this country, but I think it got overshadowed a bit with our other federal announcement that...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I certainly can update the House on our trip. I just got back this morning. PDAC, again, was another great success for the Government of the Northwest Territories, and a big thank you out to all of our staff who are down there still attending for the next couple of days to help educate people and promote the Northwest Territories. I was there, along with Minister Sohi and Parliamentary Secretary Lefebvre, to announce the Canadian Minerals and Metals Plan, and when we announced it, we had a large turnout, a contingent of people who were there, who were very supportive of...

As I have said, we have sent someone out there to clean out this facility right now, and the Member is clearly right. We have 8,000 loads going to the mine site this year, so there are 16,000 extra trucks of traffic going just past that facility alone. Just think about that, if that was your washroom, the amount of toilet paper you have to supply.

We are looking at this thing. This is clearly an issue that is not going to go away unless we do something about it, but as I said, these things are located in locations where there is no access to power. We have to have a serious look at how we are...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Unlike the summer park season, when we have contractors who look after these facilities on a daily basis, in the wintertime, we send our contractor out once a month to look after these facilities. Then, when conditions like this happen, of course, we dispatch the contractor out there. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.