Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, I should point out that the description used by the Members of this House to describe our roads is a little unfair. Our roads are all considered to be safe. We may have a few potholes and not open year round, but we have different categories of roads. We have winter roads, gravel roads, roads that have chipseal. They all require investment.
I think everybody in this House recognizes that most of our transportation infrastructure and highway system is at the point where it needs to be reconstructed. They need to have investment and investment dollars that we really don’t have except to allow maintenance and ensure that we have the travelling public’s safety in mind.
We also, at the same time, have many bridges and many culverts that need to be replaced. They’re at that point in the cycle where they need replacing and investment. The Member has mentioned the investment made in the Sahtu. By the end of this government we hope to have at least 39 bridges all constructed and finished in those areas in that region. It really requires a lot of investment.
The rationale behind doing all these projects is to provide transportation for as many months of the year as possible. There is, of course, direction that comes from this House. In the previous government there was, I think, very clear direction by the Members that we needed to invest in roads that connect communities. Up to now the majority of our funding went to roads that had been impacted by resource development, projects and resource development in the area. The bulk of our money went into Highway No. 3, Highway No. 1 and the Sahtu.
We’re trying to spread it around. We recognize that we need to invest more money and reconstruct Highway No. 8. We recognize that we need to reconstruct and pick up where we left off on Highway No. 7, and it has to be reconstructed.
A lot of these projects, including the work that needs to be done on Highway No. 1, are a result of deferred investment. Now we’re seeing some direction that we thought we had from the previous government to invest in Highway No. 5 and Highway No. 6 to ensure that there are safe roads there and also to try to keep it to a standard that would allow the traffic to travel back and forth. We have plans to reconstruct portions of that road, of highways No. 5 and No. 6. We also have plans to
chipseal a good part of those roads. We’d like to see more investment in there, of course, but at this point we have to identify other sources.
This highway provides a real essential link for two communities, and that’s Fort Resolution and Fort Smith. So those two communities are dependent on this road for access to the southern part of Canada and Hay River and also into the North Slave. You know, we need to find additional dollars to upgrade it. We need to do more, of course, to reconstruct it, and there are two sources of funding that we’ve been pursuing. One is through negotiations with Wood Buffalo Park that would allow us to match dollars or have a partnership arrangement to invest in this highway. The other one is to try to earmark some of the dollars that we have negotiated through the Building Canada Fund
to be allocated
to these two community links.
There is other investment, of course, that is required to some of the smaller communities: the access roads, Nahanni Butte, Jean Marie, Hay River reserve. They all need investment, and those have to be considered. But in this case this is an issue where we wanted to maintain the upkeep of the road. Somebody’s mentioned that the road is in pretty good shape. I am very happy to hear that. We consider it to be a very safe and reliable link; however, we’d like to keep it that way. Investing these dollars to reconstruct portions of it — upgrade it so that we can chipseal it — would maintain that standard. So that’s the rationale behind this, and it was also included as part of our business planning that was carried over from the last government.
