Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will be supporting the motion here. I appreciate my colleague bringing this forward. This relying on industry…(inaudible)…policy, as we heard during our tour in the Bakken from just about everybody not to rely on industry, don’t be controlled by them. In fact, take control and make them participate and so on. We heard a lot of horror stories last winter, and I know the Minister and the Member for the Sahtu described some of the close calls they actually witnessed, and we’ve all heard stories from people who drove the highway and observed people or truck drivers and their trucks falling down hills, and in one case even abandoning the truck when it started to slide down the hill. These sorts of accidents.
We know that industry ignored the rules and the regulations for the use of the ice road and were ignorant about that, and I know the department’s been working on that, and I think maybe late in the game we did try to get some enforcement going out
there, but this is pretty classic stuff. Now we are talking about moving into a season where we are actually going to be moving toxic hazardous materials over the road in large quantities with large, wieldy pieces of equipment, so the costs are going up. The stakes are much higher.
During our tour, again, we heard from the medical emergency people that the sorts of accidents that you see with this sort of activity are, as they described in their words, grotesque, horrific, like a war zone. These are big, awkward pieces of equipment, often with hazardous materials and it’s not pretty. In fact, like a war zone, they said. They were having to treat more and more people for emergency medical providers with post-traumatic stress syndrome as a result of attending these accidents. I think we are treating this pretty lightly. I appreciate, again, the attention that my colleague Mr. Yakeleya is bringing with this motion, to try and learn from the lessons of others and get ahead of the game here. I know the Minister is also aware of this information. It was his tour that we were on when we heard this information. I appreciated that opportunity. Mahsi.