Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This is an opportunity for Cabinet, since it’s a free vote today, to stand and speak on an issue and say what may be on our minds. I want to talk about roads today.

I look around this Legislature and my count is there’s 14 MLAs that have constituencies that are all hooked up by roads. I would suggest that if any of us 14 were not hooked up by roads we would be absolutely as passionate about having that kind of transportation as our colleagues are that have to suffer on winter roads or, as Mr. Yakeleya has said over the years, goat trails through the Sahtu.

Since the very beginning of time and since man stood upright and started living together there’s two things that have linked us or allowed us to link

together. That’s waterways and initially trails, that once we invented the wheel we developed roads. In the Northwest Territories we’ve used the waterways for thousands of years. But we’re an evolving jurisdiction and we have a significant portion of our jurisdiction that doesn’t have the access of basic roads.

I think, like all my colleagues in this House, it is now time for us to push to get this done. As we look at the North West Passage and, as my colleague Mr. Bromley indicated, the climate change, there are things happening in the Far North. For better or for worse they are happening. An ice-free North West Passage. If we’re looking at the North West Passage becoming a shipping route, the issue of deep-water ports, we need more than ever to be prepared to take advantage of the opportunities that are there in an environmentally responsible way, to be sure, but we are in need and we want to anticipate the future. The road is important.

We also, hopefully, will have a major project, if it proves out. We have qualified support for the pipeline. I know the two aren’t necessarily inextricably linked, but they are both going up the valley, they are both going the same way. We want to be as prepared as possible in all ways to take advantage of what the future may hold for us.

I don’t see this as a huge subsidy. If we did everything we do in the North, including in Yellowknife, would be seen as a subsidy. I see this as a huge investment, an investment in the future, an investment in our children and our grandchildren and giving them opportunities that we don’t currently have up the valley.

I am in support of this motion and I think it’s going to be high time that we get it done.