Thank you, Mr. Chair. We have quite a number of various projects or programs underway to look at safety on the Mackenzie Valley winter road. The Member mentioned a few initiatives that are underway.
On the capital side of things we’ve invested quite heavily in the winter road for the last half a dozen years or so. We look at what’s in front of the committee here now; that will continue. A number of different bridges are going to, we hope, be constructed shortly, including the Blackwater River bridge and a couple of others.
We also have ongoing money for grade improvements to the winter roads. We’ve done an assessment of the winter road and identified those areas where a correction of the horizontal or vertical alignment might be required. As the Member mentioned, one of the major ones there was the bypass of the community of Tulita, where we moved the winter road out of the community of Tulita to address some of those safety issues. We also did the same thing with Norman Wells a couple of years ago.
We hope, as well, to keep improving the communication and partner with industry and make sure they’re aware of all their requirements. We do have an ongoing dialogue with industry and the users of the winter road. We’ve structured our contracts on the winter road so that when they have some extraordinary use of the road, they would contribute to the department to account for any additional work that’s required to construct the road or to operate and maintain the road.
We do think that with those initiatives, as well as with continuing to improve the signage, the road is becoming safer all the time.