Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There are some real deficiencies with that road in terms of traffic. There are a lot of people who live in the new town and work in the old town, so there is just a lot of vehicular
traffic, residents of Hay River on that road. Then you add to the mix the transport trucks that go there because the business they conduct is at the far end of that section of roadway. There is no turning lane at the airport, for example. You have school buses on there, a lot of different traffic. It's narrow and it's not sufficient. Even if there were not any further resource development and the pipeline didn't go, just the trucks that are hauling fuel, that are going to the mines, all those trucks pass through Hay River on that stretch of the Mackenzie Highway. I know the railway is planning a $40 million upgrade and it runs parallel to the highway there. I think that if you don't have any costings or projections on that...That road belongs to you, Mr. Chairman. It belongs to Mr. McLeod. It may run through Hay River, but it's the territorial government's road. It needs some quite urgent attention if you don't have anything on the books on that.
Onto a different subject, there is reference to resurfacing some areas of road. There is capital being set aside for that. There is a lot of chipsealing that goes on over top of paved roads. One thing I have noticed, and I travel the highways here quite extensively, is that when roads are resurfaced with chipseal, quite often the markings on the road...I don't know what kind of paint it is, if it's supposed to just brighten the colour or it's supposed to be reflective or what, but it seems like the porousness of the chipseal seems to absorb the paint and it's not the same kind of contrast you would get on a paved road. I think we need to do something to address that because with the heavy traffic, anytime it has snowed and you get behind or even meeting oncoming transport trucks, there is quite a number of seconds there where you can't see the road at all, but better markings would certainly help a lot to be able to see where the centre line is and where the shoulder line is. I would like to register my complaint about the quality of the markings on the road.
Mr. Chairman, I heard just recently an article on the radio about provinces contemplating the demographics of people who are going to be on the road in the next while. The baby boomers are a large population which just keep moving through this world. It's a large number of people. In other provinces, they have been contemplating this change and when they are replacing highway signs, they are making them larger and they are making them more reflective. When they are replacing things, they are not going out and tearing every sign down and replacing it, but when they are doing their planning for highways and markings and that sort of thing, they are taking into account that the majority of drivers on the road in the next 20 years are going to be people who are older. I want to make sure that you're alert to that fact and we just become aware of that, so we don't have a certain type of system on southern roads and then we get into the Northwest Territories and everything is different. We need to be in sync, I guess. That's the point I am trying to make. I was wondering if the Minister was aware of that through his meetings with other provincial Ministers. Is he aware of initiatives to try to address this changing demographic in terms of highways and signage? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.