Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We have been reconstructing the section of Highway No. 1 from the Fort Providence junction to Checkpoint for a number of years. Funding is coming from the Build Canada Plan. We were able to extend the chipseal from Fort Providence towards Simpson for about 20 kilometres or so. We had wanted to do a little bit more, but based on the performance of a short stretch of chipseal that we had there, we decided it wasn’t the best investment because it looked like we were just going to lose the chipseal.
Whenever you construct a road and before you put chispeal on, the road has to have the strength in it in order to maintain the chipseal surface. That was the challenge we were seeing. We did do some repairs and upgraded that stretch of road.
In the meantime, this past summer we’ve been working on a 10-kilometre stretch right near Checkpoint. The plan is that next summer we will go in and chipseal that. We also hope to, depending on tender prices, get another six- to eight-kilometre stretch of road carrying on toward Fort Providence from the last stretch. Reconstruct that and then actually chipseal that entire stretch of road by the end of next summer. It should be 16 to 18 kilometres of additional chipseal on that road by the end of next summer.