Transport committee  Good morning. Thank you very much for the invitation. This is history-making for my region of the country, the lower north shore. To our knowledge we've never been invited to something so important and to be able to make a presentation. I would also like to thank the committee

Transport committee  Thank you. You know, I think the first thing that I'd like to speak about, just to show you how different we are from the rest of the country, is that we have to participate by phone, because our Internet is not fast enough. It's being worked on. There is a project being worked

Transport committee  No problem. Thank you very much.

Transport committee  Thank you very much for the question. First of all, two weeks ago, we had the people come in from Transports Québec and announce that two sections of road will be done: from La Romaine to Kégaska, and from La Tabatière—my own town—to Tête-à-la-Baleine. There are some 80 kilomet

Transport committee  Yes, Wabush, plus we had a letter.... I have to come to climate change. We only get one vessel a week from the month of April until the middle part of January, and we've been missing that. If you don't get your fresh fruit and vegetables that week, like Mayor Gros just said, the

Transport committee  You wouldn't believe it. You look at the map and you look at where it crosses. I was a captain for 27 years. I've been in Port aux Basques quite a few times, and I know what is happening to the weather. I agree with the fellow who said that they're getting 200-kilometre winds the

Transport committee  The road network, certainly. Otherwise, the producers or processing plants are not on a level playing field with the ones in the rest of the country. We have to pay to move our goods between Harrington, La Tabatière or other villages along the coast and Rimouski. Then they are t

Transport committee  For our part, we want route 138, which is already a national road up to Sept-Îles, to become national up to Blanc-Sablon. The extension has been done up to Kegaska, and there is another leg of about 250 kilometres to complete. That investment would mean the country would be cover

Transport committee  Just to give you an idea, I will give you an example. By air, there are 30 kilometres between La Tabatière and Tête-à-la-Baleine, and the airfare is $650. Given the income levels of the population in that region, no one can afford that. We are prisoners in our own villages. Peopl

Transport committee  I don't know if the west coast is all pristine. We are pristine, and I don't see a problem with tankers. The rules and regulations have to be such that before they get to the ports, we make sure that the captains and crew are not drunk. When you [Inaudible—Editor] and the spillag

Transport committee  To me, if the oil that comes out of Alberta and Saskatchewan is good to burn, why not have access across the range to sell the product?

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Thank you, most of all, for the invitation. It's not often that the people of our isolated communities, from Kegaska to Blanc-Sablon, get the opportunity to speak to such a distinguished panel and to get our point across that we do occupy the ter

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  What I've been told by most of the stores in our communities is that the problem is the bureaucracy, or the paperwork that's involved in order to get the nutrition north program. Since we just got hooked up in the last two months with high-speed Internet, this is all new for us.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I'm from La Tabatière. I'm originally from Harrington Harbour, but when I was six years old—my mom used to be a telegraph operator—we moved to Tabatière. We call it Tabatière, but it's La Tabatière.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I have a status. I'm a Malécite from Cacouna. My great-grandmother was a Malécite. The rest are white, with names like Jones and Gallichon and Morency. There are a lot of French names, but 90% of the communities are anglophone. We're a majority in a minority, and the majority is