Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m just going to follow up with some questions to the Minister of Transportation in regard to the ferry operations in Inuvik.
I would just like to, first of all, ask the Minister of Transportation how many days was the ferry shut down when it was supposed to be open, or how many days was it operational during that freeze-up and breakup period?
Thank you, Mr. Moses. The Minister of Transportation, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d have to answer that question in two parts. First, with light vehicles, historically traffic for light vehicles was essentially shut down for almost a full month. That’s the historical data. Last year they were shut down for 19 days. Then vehicles up to 60,000, which is a threshold, I think, where the majority of the supplies can get across the Mackenzie River, historically in the last several years the shutdown has been anywhere from 72 to 83 days. Last year the shutdown was 33 days.
As I mentioned in my Member’s statement, just because the ferry is in the middle of the river and it’s moving at, like I said, a snail’s pace doesn’t mean that it’s operational, and it’s also a delay in terms of products and goods being transported to the community of Inuvik.
I’d like to ask the Minister of the department what is his department going to do to communicate the operation of the ferry and the hours that it’s operating and the time and length that it’s going to be taking off and arriving from one side to the other, and if it’s shut down, how is he going to communicate that to the business sector who are waiting on these goods?
The department has done some debriefing meetings with the Town of Inuvik, the community of Fort McPherson, Inuvik Gas Ltd., people that provide the energy to the community. Internally, we know that we have dealings with the Power Corp and we try to have these meetings to debrief amongst each other and see what we can learn from what has occurred since the last season when we were trying to operate the ferry right up until the winter road was open.
The Minister kind of got into my next question. We’ve had one year of the ferry operating, trying to operate here all season round. Now we’re putting in the winter road.
What is the department going to be doing differently from lessons learned from the first year, so we have a more efficient operating system so we get our goods and services to the residents and business owners of the community of Inuvik? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Probably the two biggest lessons learned were that we need to cut the ice sooner to get the ferry in before the ice hardens too much. That was a big lesson. The second lesson learned is we need to accelerate the construction of the ice road. Last year we were accelerating the construction of the ice road, but we need to add to that and accelerate the ice road even further.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The last question is in terms of any of these business owners who have products that might get ruined or be spoiled that have to stay on the other side of the river and can’t get to the community of Inuvik, does the Department of Transportation, who takes care of this infrastructure and operation, have a reimbursement program for who falls behind, whether it’s a contract or whether it’s in goods and services being ruined? Do they have a reimbursement program for our small businesses that are affected when there is a delay in goods and services coming across the ferry crossing? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The Department of Transportation does not have that type of reimbursement program. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.
