Mr. Chairman, I recall reading in the five-year capital plan the justification for this funding was to bring this particular access road up to all-weather road standards and, therefore, it would become an all-weather road. It seems to me that an all-weather road to Jean Marie River is the same as an all-weather road from Tuktoyaktuk to Inuvik except that one is a little longer than the other. I understand that Jean Marie River is 27 miles long. How long does a road have to be before it quits being an access road and becomes a highway?
I totally support this type of program and the idea of changing transportation of our highway into our access road if we can get it built. I understand the system and I understand that the government will benefit, because once the all-weather road is in place to Jean Marie River, obviously you would have no more winter road costs. But that is exactly the same thing my people want to do -- do away with the winter road, if possible, and switch to an all weather road -but we believe we have a lot more justification for the request because we have a population of 1,000 plus. We have thousands of tourists every summer, but they all fly in. We believe that the justification is there for the highway or the access road, whatever you want to call it. I prefer access road seeing as now you have money for it. But the point of all this is that I believe that all communities should have the ability to access this program, and I encourage the department to put more money into the thing. If it creates jobs, if it creates training for the communities, I am definitely 100 per cent in support of the program. If they can tie in with Arctic College programs, I support that 100 per cent.
I guess my point is that if it is good enough for one community to call it an access road, well, then we should call them all access roads. I think we heard from the federal representative, Ethel Blondin, not too long ago, that the federal government has no intention of building any more roads up in this country, so it's our responsibility to do it. I believe that we are supposed to be taking over responsibility from the federal government, so I support your department in continuing this program, with a bigger budget, provided it is available to all communities and it creates work and gets people off of welfare. Thank you.