Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Last week I wrote the Minister of Transportation some questions about the Mackenzie Valley Highway and the potential of closing the road only to winter travel, and my questions today are for him in asking, with the temperatures still not dropping in the Sahtu region, why the roads are being closed to winter road traffic only?
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. The Minister of Transportation, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. For communication purposes, we’ve communicated, when we saw that the weather was warming up a bit, a possibility of reducing heavy traffic to night traffic, but at this time there are no restrictions. Thank you.
Thank you. My next question about these roads is the maintenance and indications are that the maintenance and operations of the maintenance are being shut down at this current time, I’m assuming because of funding. Is this true?
Thank you. The maintenance that needs to be done on the winter road is being done. There will sometimes be just putting heavy equipment on the winter roads, such as heavy maintenance equipment, will do more harm than good in shortening the length that the road may be open. So, essentially what is happening is in any areas where they are dark and attractive to the sun, we try to cover it with snow. But the maintenance that needs to be done to extend the road as long as possible will be done. Thank you.
Thank you. I know with this road specifically we’ve gotten some assistance from industry. I’m just wondering: is there a set budget for this type of maintenance, or do we basically continue the maintenance until we can keep the road open as long as possible and are we allowed to have cost overruns similar to firefighting season? We don’t know what the length of a winter season is going to be and it may be more costly. So is there a set budget and are we allowed to exceed the maintenance budgets?
Thank you. Generally the winter roads operate in a certain time period. We track the average times in which the roads remain open. As far as the operations costs of the road, these are all done by contract. So we sign the contract with a company to do a certain part of the winter road and we stay with that contract, and that contract is intended to provide services from the time the road opens until the road closes. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bouchard.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Obviously, I do believe we are seeing a colder than average season and I’m just wondering, if the season is longer, will the Department of Transportation extend these road contracts, these road maintenance contracts and take on the additional costs?
Thank you. All NWT winter roads are public roads and the Department of Transportation tries to keep the roads open as long as possible. Budgets are a consideration, but if the road can be extended to remain open for an extra week or something at the end of March, then the department will do everything they can to extend that road. But, of course, money is a consideration. This is not a bottomless pit. We have to, at some point, follow the contract. There are provisions in the contract that allow the road to be open as long as possible. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.
