Madam Speaker, I would like to take a few minutes today to talk about some positive developments in the Department of Transportation's community access roads program. As Members are aware, the idea for a community access roads program came from the advice of Members of this House and, in particular, the honourable Member for Natilikmiot. If progress made this year is any indication, I am
pleased to say that it seems to have caught on. The intent of the program is to develop local roads to nearby areas of importance.
I want to emphasize that, from start to finish, community access roads are largely community initiatives. The Department of Transportation funds the projects through contribution agreements with the communities. The community gives the department a proposal and, from the proposal, the community and the department work out the material, financial and human resources they will jointly contribute to the project.
Madam Speaker, in Taloyoak, the hamlet and the department made a 50/50 cost sharing agreement to hire 18 students who repaired the ATV trails to Netsilik Lake and Redfish Lake. The community of Igloolik completed a two-year project to fix a five-kilometre trail to Igloolik Point. Cap Mountain Ventures of Wrigley improved a three-kilometre access road to the boots camp on the Willowlake River. In Arviat, the hamlet built two kilometres of road past Landing Lake towards the Maguse River. The hamlet of Resolute worked to improve the road to Sight Point. The community of Jean Marie River upgraded seven kilometres of winter road to all-weather quality. Baker Lake added two more kilometres to the Whitehills Lake Road. And, the material for a bridge over the Kuruluk River arrived in Broughton Island this summer. The community will move the pieces to the river by snowmobile and komatik and assemble the bridge by hand next spring.
As the Minister of Transportation, it is rewarding to see the effort and commitment that communities are willing to invest in their access roads. The contribution agreement is a flexible way to match community resources with the scope and scale of the project. I have said before that I wanted to see community access roads become a larger part of the transportation portfolio. As a goal, I imagined a program with an annual budget of $1 million. For next year, the Department of Transportation is already examining proposals worth $700,000 and it expects to receive as many as 10 more new proposals.
With the growing interest this year, I am pleased to say that the community access roads program is quickly becoming one of the Department of Transportation's most successful programs. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
---Applause