Thank you and I apologize to the Member in not giving her a time in response to her previous question, but when the approvals come in and we get the nod from the federal government, things will move quickly. We’re hopeful that even by perhaps Friday we could be in front of standing committee. If we are going to make something happen in the Beaufort-Delta, things are going to have to progress quickly in order to make that happen. So it could be as early as this week, in response to the Member’s previous question.
On the Mackenzie Valley winter road, and again that’s capital, but I’ll touch on this for the Member. We did have some difficulties early on in the season. There’s been a tremendous amount of heavy truck traffic in the Mackenzie Valley, given the economic activity that’s taken place there. Not just in the Sahtu in and around Norman Wells and
Tulita, but also further south we noticed quite a bit of activity in and around Wrigley and Fort Simpson as well. You couldn’t get a hotel room in Fort Simpson. Very much a busy, busy place. Ledcor is doing a lot of work on the Enbridge line north of Simpson and there are lots of jobs and opportunities for people, but that has brought some problems for the winter road and that is the heavy truck traffic.
I had the opportunity on the weekend to drive from Fort Good Hope to Fort Simpson. So I saw firsthand some of the concerns that are out there. The ruts in the road, there’s some holes, there’s some approaches that needed some work. As soon as I got back on Monday, the first guy I phoned was my deputy minister and we were assured that the contractors that are in place addressed the areas of concern that Norman and I saw on the ride down from Fort Good Hope.
So there are issues, but it is a winter road, the speed limit is 50 kilometres an hour. Really, if you talk to the people in the Mackenzie Valley, I mean, that winter road is a real lifeline for them getting goods in and travelling around the communities and the regions. So they depend heavily on that winter road.
But again, the bottom line, and it impressed upon me and anybody I talked to on that trip, was the need for an all-weather road down the Mackenzie Valley, and judging by the truck traffic that we saw coming south from Norman Wells, we need an all-weather road there sooner rather than later. Thank you.