Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I just want to note that for the communities, they don’t get to see this part of the Leg. work, the Committee of the Whole business. Usually we’ve concluded the TV time, as we call it, for the communities before this section. I’d like to say hello to the communities.

While we’re discussing the capital budget with respect to Transportation, in my region, the Nahendeh riding, we had a huge upset in the travelling public when the roads collapsed in the spring. There are a number of reasons for it, but the main reason is that it is an old road and structure that needs continuous improvement. In fact, that was recognized by our government, and we’ve reconstructed huge sections, especially from the B.C. border towards Fort Liard. That was very much needed. The 20 kilometres they have done to date is a huge improvement. We’d sure like to see the other 12 kilometres done up to the standard that is there. We’re hoping that we can press towards eventually chipsealing that section again. I know that part was chipsealed briefly for the three months before it all broke apart.

There was a good foreshadowing of a much improved road transportation system that we could have, but now we’re seeing to improve the road and do it better. It takes reconstruction to do that, and it takes a lot of our Transportation resources. We have done that in the past using our CSIF dollars, especially at that one section.

The new collapse in the road there, Mr. Chair, is about one kilometre — I think 170 to 190; I may be wrong on that — but for almost two kilometres, maybe more actually, the cover was destroyed right to the sub-base, right to the clay base, and became, in effect, a mudhole, so we shut down the highway system. Transportation tried their best to get it restored in the early months, but they had to wait for better weather to do that. As a result, these roads were shut down.

It is part of our national highway system and also part of our tourism strategy for the NWT to bring tourists off the Alaska Highway and up Highway No. 7 toward the Northwest Territories to come and see

the beauty of our great country. But once the word gets out that Highway No. 7 is shut down…. Word of mouth spreads very fast to all the travellers from our southern provinces, as well as the U.S. The fellow that owns an airplane company in Fort Simpson indicated that his contacts in Europe and Germany were actually mentioning the fact that Highway No. 7 was closed in the Nahendeh riding. He said, “Look, Kevin, it’s a very important road; we’ve got to do something about it.”

So this spring I made numerous Member’s statements and got assurances from the Minister at that time that the section that had collapsed would be reconstructed. In fact, I had — I like to say Granny from Nahanni — Granny from Nahanni tell me: “Look, Kevin, what you do is you open the road, and then you bring in more gravel. You fill it in with rip-rap and rebuild the road.” Housewives and grannies are telling me how to reconstruct the road.

What, in effect, they had done for that section is just open it up, dry that clay base and then put it back together, and now they’ve got a good gravel cover. But I’m saying and my people are saying, “That is not good enough, Kevin. Come this spring we just may get the same situation, because in effect the same type of base is still there.” So we’ve got to look at some kind of reconstruction.

Numerous memos and e-mails to the department and to the Minister indicate to me that they’re going to be looking at some more work next year, but what has happened is that they had to take away from the resources that were there initially for the first 32 kilometres, Mr. Chair. To take away that much…. We needed to work and reallocate to another section that collapsed. Maybe there’ll be more; there’s got be more assessment done on Highway No. 7.

It’s that old classic syndrome of taking away from Peter for Paul, Mr. Chair. I cannot advocate for that. In fact, I had thought that here is a sure, good case for extraordinary funding, if any, that our government should identify. Nowhere are there any indications in any of my correspondence that there was extraordinary funding looked at for Highway No. 7, particularly for this collapse of the highway. Often we do that, like when there’s an emergency. We have classic examples of schools collapsing and cracking in half and that kind of infrastructure. You know, there’s emergency funding, and this type of infrastructure is collapsing as well, so I don’t see why it doesn’t qualify for extraordinary funding. I think that should be so.

I just want to talk a little a bit about our discussion on, I believe, last Friday. We removed $1.4 million from, I think it was, Highway No. 5, the chipsealing. I’m not too sure how that was going to work, but we removed $1.4 million. What I would like to see is a reallocation of those resources. I know that’s

something the Committee of the Whole has being been discussing and looking at, and at the appropriate time we will debate that in the motion, Mr. Chair.

For me, I would like to continue to reiterate that Highway No. 7 is a very important piece of highway. It was regarded Canada-wide, and even globally people talk about that piece of infrastructure. We’ve got to treat it as such, as a highly valuable piece of infrastructure that we’ve got to continue to rebuild. The case here is to rebuild and reconstruct it.

So I’d like press upon the department that we continue to spend those resources. They will not take away from other reconstruction efforts on that section. That’s the key. Even though it happened in the springtime, the slowdown and the load restrictions on Highway No. 7 impacted us throughout the summer. In fact, there were many, many cases where it caused great disruptions of moving freight, et cetera. I could just go on. Well, actually one of the biggest ones was that we had high school students who got interrupted two ways: once because they got overflowed on Highway No. 1 just this side of the Providence junction, and the school bus went around and just about got interrupted on the Highway No. 7 side to get back to Fort Simpson, but fortunately the road had not deteriorated to where it was impassable at that point. It just goes to show the importance of Highways No. 1 and No. 7.

I cannot reiterate enough the importance to my riding of having a good base transportation infrastructure that is solid and reconstructed. If there’s anything I can ask the Minister at this point, Mr. Chair, it’s this: what exactly is the strategy and the go forward plan to work on and reconstruct Highway No. 7?