Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Transportation. He has indicated that he had the opportunity to meet with the Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure when he was in Ottawa last week. I’m just wondering if he was able to get any commitment on cost sharing of the Tuk to Inuvik highway, the 75/25 for the complete cost of that construction.
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. The Minister of Transportation, Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That question was raised with Minister Lebel when we had the meeting with him and it wasn’t confirmed nor denied whether they would be willing to look at 75/25. Our belief is that that will be the case. He didn’t say otherwise, so we’re going on that premise that it will be 75/25.
I’m just wondering, with the meetings with Minister Lebel, if there was discussion of other infrastructure such as the Mackenzie Highway and the potential of needing funds for that, and is the federal government interested in the responsibility for constructing roads on the Mackenzie Highway; specifically, the Sahtu area.
In other meetings we had with other federal Ministers, the subject of the Mackenzie Valley Highway did come up. Certainly, we let them know what was happening in the central Mackenzie in terms of the shale oil development there and the need for further infrastructure investment in our territory.
In terms of the discussion about dredging in the port of Hay River, that discussion did come up as well with the parliamentary secretary, Mr. Steven Fletcher.
The Minister must be reading my mind. My next question was about the port of Hay River and the dredging that the federal government is responsible for.
What is the next step in confirming some of this funding? We currently have no commitments from the federal government. What is the next step? Do we have another meeting planned with Minister Lebel to confirm some of these infrastructure dollars that we require?
First, with the Inuvik-Tuk highway, we are going to, hopefully, be working toward a funding arrangement with the federal government here in the very near future.
Secondly, on the Mackenzie Valley Highway, we thanked all the federal Ministers that we met with for their involvement with the help we’ve gotten from CanNor to continue the work on the Mackenzie Valley Highway. I mentioned earlier we had just recently got another $600,000 through CanNor to allow us to work with communities up and down the Mackenzie Valley to continue that momentum on the Mackenzie Valley all-weather road.
On the port of Hay River and the dredging program there, it was suggested to me by the parliamentary secretary that we engage in a letter writing campaign to himself and to the Minister of Transportation, Mr. Denis Lebel. We certainly will take him up on that offer and get those letters out as soon as possible.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bouchard.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The question on the Hay River dredging, I’m just wondering if the Minister has any dollars to commit to doing, other than letter writing. Any dollars for assessing the value and the cost of dredging the Hay River?
The federal government didn’t commit any dollars during these meetings, but we did mention to them that at one point in time they had a $50 million program for dredging and how detrimental the lack of having a program is to a community like Hay River. That was quite clearly articulated to Minister Fletcher. We will try our best to get some funding from the federal government to look at a dredging program in the port of Hay River.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
