Thank you, Madam Speaker. When I moved from the eastern Arctic to the west 20 years ago, I looked forward to being able to have a vehicle to drive on a highway. I thought that would be something nice to do. But I soon realized what a nightmare it could be, because more people who tried using the highway south in those days were very often pulled through large tracks of that highway by tractors because of the amount of work that was going on, on a road that was built really for the mining industry.

When I ran in 1987, Madam Speaker, I had a list of things that I thought were important for us to achieve, and I used the word "accountability." In the T in accountability, I had put truckers and a paved road to Yellowknife. That was a plank, if you like, in the platform.

I would like to congratulate the current Minister of Transportation and previous ones who have committed themselves to that vision of a road which, in fact, would link up a road to all kinds of places and people throughout the Northwest Territories, eventually. I'm happy to report that this road now is no longer the subject of complaint that it used to be. I used to meet dozens and dozens of people every summer who had nothing very good to say about their trip north because of the terrible experiences they had had along the road. But now things have changed, and people can see that that was an investment that really was a worthwhile one because people now talk about coming back and inviting their friends to come back. Having a road that makes so many places in the north more accessible to families who can't afford to fly and so on, is a boon to all the people in the Northwest Territories, not only to those people who live along the highway. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

---Applause