Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just in terms of general comments on Transportation, I can only think of one particularly pressing issue as it relates to the community of Hay River. Hay River is a lovely little town on the south shore of Great Slave Lake. A river runs through it; a rail line runs through it; and a road runs through it, which would be particularly of interest to Mr. Menicoche because that is his road. The Mackenzie Highway runs right through Hay River and right to the West Channel.
With the activity, the shipping, the transporting of goods to the mines, that road is very well utilized at this time of year. I guess somewhat similarly to Yellowknife, it seems the trucks have to come right into Yellowknife as well on Old Airport Road, about one a minute it seems. I was going to the airport last Friday and I was just trying to turn there to go to the airport and they were just one truck right after another after another. Well, Hay River is where the fuel is getting loaded into those trucks. So those same trucks that are pulling into Yellowknife are starting off a lot of them in Hay River and so we have those big trucks rolling down the Mackenzie Highway right through town to the Old Town where they load up with the fuel to come to Yellowknife for the mines. So the highway, as the Minister probably well knows, is not very wide, doesn't have turning lanes on it, it probably doesn't have exactly the right kind of slope for some of the curves that are on it and there are some important turnoffs on that highway, notably the airport for one thing that has a lot of traffic coming and going from it as well. So in the socio-economic agreement on the pipeline, the agreement talks about industry dealing with municipalities directly in terms of the use of infrastructure or water and sewer services et cetera, but I somehow am not thinking that the Mackenzie gas project proponents are going to want to build or widen the highway through Hay River in order to get to the barge facilities, the shipyards, potentially the fuel tank farms, all those sorts of things.
So I don't know what it would take to get the capital identified for enhancements to that Mackenzie Highway that runs through Hay River; but might I suggest that if the pipeline does go, that is going to be a very immediate and serious problem that will be staring somebody in the face. Like I said, I kind of doubt if industry is going to want to pick up the full price of it, and I certainly know the taxpayers of Hay River are not going to want to pick up the price tag for it and it is a GNWT road. So later on when we get into the detail, or right now, for that matter, if the Minister wants to respond, I'd like to ask the Minister if there's anything in the works that could address the highway in Hay River?
A lot of the other areas to do with transportation infrastructure have been already covered by MLAs representing different regions of the Northwest Territories here. I guess we're not all just confined to only drive on the roads that are in our own constituencies, so we get to observe some of the issues. Lately I haven't been driving on Highway No. 3 because I'm afraid of the buffalo and now I'm afraid of the transport trucks, but I am going to drive home tomorrow night and I'll give the Minister a full report when I get back on how the road is looking in terms of maintenance and shifting and heaving and all that sort of thing. But I'm mostly interested in that road that runs through Hay River and what the Department of Transportation could potentially bring to the table to help us address that problem. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.