Mr. Speaker, my questions are to the Minister of Transportation. Over the past fall here, we had some issues with the shipping company, NTCL, and certainly in some of my communities we did not see the full shipment of some of our supplies or fuel into our communities.
I want to ask the Minister of Transportation, has he had any meetings with NTCL to see what was the problem and how can it be rectified so this is not a continuous issue for us every year in the Sahtu or in any other small communities?
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister of Transportation, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, we have met with NTCL as a Department of Public Works. A lot of the discussion did spill over into my responsibilities as Minister of Transportation. They had offered some solutions to the problem that occurred this year and we’ve agreed to include them in our multi-modal Transportation Strategy. Thank you.
That is good news. I want to know if the Minister, along with NTCL, will have a meeting with the people in the Sahtu on the solutions that they’re talking about, some of the agreements that he’s talked about on the multi-modal of transportation, because people in the Sahtu would certainly be willing to listen and we want to know who’s driving this ship here. Certainly I would welcome the Minister if he can schedule a meeting in the Sahtu with the Sahtu people to talk about the NTCL issues.
More specifically, what are the solutions so that people will not have to have their materials shipped up this summer?
Definitely, the recommendations that were made by NTCL would require a lot of consultation with the people that live along the Mackenzie River. There’s no question about that. The main issue was due to the fact that this year they had record low waters, and often when NTCL monitors the water and they notice the water levels dropping, they’re always comforted with the fact that it usually comes back up in the fall. That didn’t happen this year, so this year we had probably a record low of all time water levels in the Mackenzie River.
That’s why it’s so important to come into the small communities of the Sahtu and talk to us about the solutions. We don’t know, and people in our region are asking, why is the water so low? There was no oil and gas exploration. There were dams that were running low and we had to pay extra millions of dollars to offset the costs for the request for a high percentage of an increase to the power bills.
We want to know from the Minister that NTCL and the Minister, if possible, can come to the Sahtu and talk to them about some of the solutions for barging their supplies into the community. Can the Minister make that commitment?
I should indicate that to navigable waters is not the responsibility of the Government of the Northwest Territories; however, we want to see success, as well, when we are shipping items and fuel down the Mackenzie River, so we will participate as the Department of Transportation, the Department of Public Works and Services, we will participate in any discussions, but I can’t direct NTCL to have discussions with the communities.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.
I would certainly hope the Minister would be in contact with NTCL to say, listen, we have an issue here. The government supplies, we don’t know if they all got in. Private industry supplies didn’t get in. Homeowner supplies didn’t get in. Things that didn’t get into the Sahtu certainly affect our people, so I would strongly suggest that the Minister have a conversation with NTCL and say, who’s driving this ship here?
My question is: Is NTCL paying for the freight costs that are affecting my people that have to come in because the ship didn’t go up the Mackenzie River? Our highway was closed.
Like I indicated, we had discussions with NTCL. As a government, we are one of the prime customers of NTCL. We do business with NTCL when we are shipping in the summertime. We do all our ordering in January before the season starts so that we are ready to go. When the first ships leave, then our stuff is on there. This year we did have things and items and some fuel on the ships that were turned around, but those were some of the reserve fuels that we had and some materials that we could get in through other methods.
