Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I certainly would stand right next to the Minister with a pick and shovel if he wants to go to Ottawa to argue for our roads up the Mackenzie Valley and the need for bridges up there. We can certainly have a good business case for all the northern roads in the Northwest Territories. I'm letting my views known to him in terms of our roads.

One of the things that many of my constituents are asking is there's a real need to do some training and working and we haven't seen anything from this department in terms of advocating for a training program within the region from our communities. They talked about from all the communities in terms of getting a jumpstart on a Mackenzie Valley road where communities can do one kilometre to one and a half kilometres to two kilometres of road to start laying down the Mackenzie Valley road. There's no plans from this department in terms of how we can do that, even working on the road during some quiet time. There is money there, I know that. I'm not too sure if the money is all being spent in the region or where it's going. That's what the people are saying, let's get on this road and let's do some training programs and let's see some creative initiatives being developed by the department in Fort Good Hope, Norman Wells, Tulita, and even in Deline. I know Deline is off the corridor. Let's see some training programs where they can start laying down some work in the communities to initiate or get a head start on these roads that we're speaking of, the Mackenzie Valley road.

I want to ask the Minister if his department is doing some work in that area to present back to my leadership in the Sahtu region in terms of looking at the bridges, advance some work done to enhance or speed up the project on the Mackenzie Valley road in our region. Some realignment...Look at the Bear River road from Tulita to Deline, it goes very close to the Bear River waters and zigzags in the last portion of the road to the Bear Lake there and it's pretty dangerous and there's hardly any work being done there to realign that work there. It's safety issues that we're looking at. The Minister has indicated that $41 million has gone into the Sahtu region, I don't know if it's strictly the Sahtu region, or if he's talking about the whole winter road project in the Northwest Territories, because there are other regions that do have winter roads so...I'm just speaking on behalf of my region in terms of the type of work that needs to get in there. I guess we want to see the involvement where we have our people developing some of this work here, and that's why I keep advocating for even if you have a temporary office in our region on highways. He makes a good point and I do take his point well, but it doesn't seem logical that you have a regional office out of Fort Simpson coming up and telling people up in the Sahtu about roadwork and that. Then they go back to Fort Simpson after, back to the regional office. It's mind boggling. The Minister is right; he is hearing my frustrations about our roads and how it's been done in our region. I think the department needs to step up to the plate and show some leadership in terms of building roads in our region. Thank you.