Thank you, Mr. Chairman. One of the concerns I have, especially realizing that this government has some 3,620 kilometres of road to maintain, we are only talking here of Highway No. 3, which is 330 kilometres of road. Yet the majority of the money that is in this budget, is concentrated on that particular road.
So I would like to know exactly, what happens to the other 3,300 kilometres of road that we have? Is there money there to ensure that those will continue to be maintained and brought up to the certain standards that Highway No. 3 and the people from Yellowknife have been asking for? People have to realize that the Northwest Territories is unique and we have population spread out in over half a million square miles of land. It seems like there is some greed here with regard to the amount of money that is being requested for one particular highway, some 300 kilometres, yet we do not hear anything in regard to who is taking care of the other 3,300 kilometres of road.
So we are just concentrating on less than ten percent of the major road systems in the Northwest Territories. I think, for myself, that I feel that this government is overextending itself on the amount of money being put into one particular highway system. Sooner or later, we are going to pay for the upgrades that are going to be needed to improve the other 3,300 kilometres of winter roads and we are talking about the problems we are seeing with contractors going into the different communities because of the seasonal conditions, the crossings at river crossings, in regards to ice roads. We have the community access road program that is 273 kilometres of road there that we are also maintaining and then, on top of that, we have the all-weather roads of some 20,000 kilometres.
For myself, I feel that if you figure out in the budget how much money is spent on the paving project on Highway No. 3, and the highway construction, you are talking about almost $9 million out of the department's budget.
I feel that we have to be fair to all other highways in the Northwest Territories. We hear about concerns, especially in the requests from the oil and gas industry and the problems they have run into trying to improve that industry in the Sahtu. For them to get a rig in to drill in the Sahtu, with the seasonal conditions of the road, it costs them about $1 million to drill a well in the Northwest Territories compared to $60,000 in Alberta.
A lot of that cost is transportation. We are trying to entice the industry, but we have to realize there are developments happening in the Liard area, in the Beaufort Sea. There will be wear and tear on all of these other highway systems. I for one, feel very offended that there are no real increases in that area. If anything, there have been major decreases in the area of dust control on Highway No. 8, which has dropped almost $80,000 from what it was last year. That was an initiative that was taken to try and improve the roads, yet we are cutting money where we could be making improvements.
Sure, $80,000 may not sound like much when you are talking about $8 million for 100 kilometres of road to be upgraded. The other concern that I have is because of this highway money from the federal government, it could jeopardize the revenue that we can put into increasing the federal government dollar allocation, especially if it is utilized with the old process where it was dollar for dollar. For every dollar we put in, the federal government put in a dollar. We are already maxed out at $8 million for Highway No. 3. Where is the additional money going to come from to offset the money we are going to get from the federal government?
That is a concern I have raised in committee and one I continue to raise because what I see is that we have put too many resources into one particular highway system which could jeopardize our ability to access federal dollars. We do not have the ability within the Department of Transportation to find the extra revenues in the system that have already been allocated for other road systems.
So, can the Minister tell me if the department has looked at that and what are they doing to ensure there are more dollars fairly allocated between the eight highway systems as opposed to just concentrating on one?