Thank you, Madam Chair. A lot of the comments that I'm going to make have been touched on before, but in going through the department's main estimates in committee we did touch on a lot of subjects and not the least being Highway No. 3 and the amount of money that is being spent there over the next five years.
In relation to the amount of money that is being spent on other highways throughout the Territories, in our
deliberations there were a lot of questions around how that money was earmarked for Highway No. 3 and why they had put it so high on the priority list. It was brought to my attention, and I actually checked it out, that a lot of that funding came through Corridors for Canada and it was a project that was identified in Corridors for Canada. Not to say that from my perspective that I think that that's the highest priority area that I would put it on. But I do realize that there is a lot of traffic on Highway No. 3 from industry, and the tourist industry has grown quite a bit and uses that highway an awful lot.
Apart from that, the amount of money going in that one was a concern to committee, and the Bear River Bridge was also a concern trying to figure out how it fit the priority spending area. I think from my perspective, one of the areas that I see that continues to be a concern, of course, is the federal government. We have an awful lot of highways to address in the Territories, not only the ones that need reconstruction and are being built. In some places we don't even have any and are trying to get highways in. When we have to depend on going to DIAND and trying to get specific projects identified through infrastructure funding and waiting for them to see and tell us what projects they think are important and which ones are not, it makes it kind of hard, I think, for us as legislators here to make decisions that everybody can have some input into what is important. I can sympathize with the department with the amount of highway system that they have to cover and with the funds that they have to do it.
I think one of the important issues that has to stay on the radar screen and addressed is while we're working in some of these areas, we have to keep a very close eye on the highway system that we have that's in fairly good shape now; the highway from the border north and right from Enterprise to Yellowknife, for that matter. We all know that the traffic on that stretch of road is increasing at quite a pace, and eventually that road is going to start showing its wear and in some cases it already does. Where we get the money to start repairing or rebuilding those sections of road that start really giving into the wear will be a question for sure.
If I had a question for the Minister it would be when we do go to Canada for extra funding, how do we arrive at priorities that we want to put to the federal government to say this is where we need money and asking them to identify projects that we want to go ahead with as new projects? Thank you, Madam Chair.