Mr. Chairman, yes, we monitor what’s going on in other jurisdictions and we do have discussions with our jurisdictions as to what their best practices are. We have also experimented with several companies on trying to find a better way to make the products last. The reality, of course, is the actual concrete mix is probably 10 times the cost of chipseal and we could replace the chipseal for many, many years at a
lower cost than what it costs to apply the other products, and that would really restrict our budget.
We only have a limited amount of investment in the area of hard topping the roads and if we were going to start applying concrete to all our roads or another product that is not of the same cost, we would have very few of our roads covered at this point.
Our plan is to have all the roads chipsealed as we move forward. It’s a long-term plan but it’s something that we know is probably the best for the protection of our roads.
Our gravel roads deteriorate very fast in certain conditions, including wet weather. Chipseal is a product that protects our roads. So that is our plan as a department and as a government. Of course, it’s probably not going to move fast enough for some people and we’re going to have this debate for many years to come. Thank you.