Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In follow-up to my Member’s statement on dredging, I will have questions for the Minister of Transportation. Last session I asked the Minister to follow up with working on dredging.
I just wanted to ask the Minister, has he taken any steps to getting any closer to dredging of the Hay River? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. Minister of Transportation, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Back in February, as the Member knows, I wrote a letter, sent a letter to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and asked that the federal government consider putting money into the port, dredging the port of Hay River, and indicated it was vital to the Territories for resupply of fuel and food to some of the communities. I did not get a response, so I’m not sure that I should be drafting another letter. I know that the public service Department of Transportation has been speaking to their counterparts about the issue, but it’s clearly something that is a federal government responsibility that we don’t feel we should be going into. Thank you.
So, the question I have is: The Minister indicated he wrote a letter in February and we haven’t followed up. We haven’t had any other conversation with any other federal Minister responsible for the dredging of the Hay River. I just want to confirm that.
Has the Minister had any conversation with the federal government about the dredging since his letter of February? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I have not had a conversation with the federal government, the departments responsible for dredging the Hay River. Thank you.
I guess I have concern with the priority of the Hay River dredging. It seems to be way low on the GNWT and Minister’s mind. I’m wondering why the Department of Transportation just went through a whole process through Build Canada, through infrastructure funding and the Hay River dredging isn’t on that agenda for the 10-year plan for the infrastructure under Build Canada in partnership with the GNWT. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The Building Canada is something that is cost shared 75 percent federal government, 25 percent GNWT for GNWT infrastructure. We did get one piece of federal infrastructure in the Build Canada Plan, which was removed by the federal government. We don’t think it would be wise to add federal responsibility and request money from the Build Canada Plan and then take over their responsibility with the money that we will be leveraging from our government. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bouchard.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister led me right into the question that I wanted to ask him. He talks about a federal responsibility versus 25 percent territorial.
In the discussion about infrastructure and the creation of new roads, wasn’t that a federal responsibility? We are currently building roads in the Northwest Territories, new roads, and we are putting in 25 percent. Where is our at least 25 percent for dredging? Why are we diverting this issue of dredging? Yet, with other things when the federal government’s responsibility is there, we are willing to put territorial money into it.
We’ve had a transfer from the federal government. The federal government devolved the Department of Transportation to the GNWT. If we put in a part of the Building Canada Plan and put something in there that was actually federal responsibility, the federal government would remove it. So it would be foolish to go through that process of adding in a project that is clearly federal responsibility just to have the government remove it and we would have to plan on replacing that with something else. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.
