Thank you, Mr. Chair. As I mentioned, I’ve been bringing this up for seven years now. Just a little bit on the history. The original construction of the Detah road was very shaky and I know the department is aware of this. It was actually thrown in very quickly at the recommendation of the member of the royalty that
had visited Detah during the springtime during the breakup and ended up having a harrowing dog team ride across the deteriorating ice. So he was motivated to lobby very hard and, successfully, this road was put in, but it was put in without much planning or engineering and so on. So it’s well recognized that it needs to be reconstructed.
It’s costing the residents of this small community of Detah, and at certain times safety issues. I appreciate the department responding when those are reported to the department. Over the decades they have been pretty good responding on a temporary basis to put the band-aid on and run the grader over and so on, but it has been costing people in certainly their vehicle maintenance and tires and so on. Those are real items.
The reconstruction has been on the books now for decades. Yellowknives Dene First Nation, over that period of time, and in the most recent decade has developed the expertise in highway construction and has a demonstrated ability for highway construction. In fact, I believe they sort of broke their teeth on this highway with some support that was finally found during the 16th Assembly to initiate
the project. But again, this project was not funded specifically and that’s been the problem from the word go. Just as the Minister’s proposal is right now to seek dollars, he hopes to find dollars, no, we’re saying now, let’s put a definite plan in place to get this project started and started this coming fiscal year. Don’t let this thing waffle along on the possibility of surplus funds if another project comes in under budget. Obviously, that hasn’t happened for decades. So some real firm action is needed.
Since we started this project, we realized the costs are actually very modest and we’re speaking in the order of $1.5 million to $2 million a year for two or three years would be significant enough to finish this project. Despite that and then perhaps that’s why it’s been sloughed off to the possibility of surplus funds and so on, or if we hope to find funds in corridor six, blah, blah, blah.
So I guess I’ve appreciated the support of my colleagues throughout the years and most recently to elevate this project from the backburner sort of when we happen to have surplus funds category to this is a priority. It’s a small but important project so let’s get it done category.
The current highway budget, as I’ve mentioned, and as Members know from looking at the numbers, is so unbalanced that if it was a flat sheet of plywood on the floor, the plywood would be standing up on one corner it’s so unbalanced, almost 80 percent going to one brand new project. That’s amazing. I don’t know where people’s heads are when they come up with that sort of distribution of budget, given the needs such as this in the Territories. Again, modest dollars required.
So we do need new dollars to do this project, but we know that there is potential within the budget to have that reallocation. So I don’t think we necessarily have to have new dollars to commit to this project, as much as make sure the dollars are committed from this year’s budget.
So that’s all I have to say, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the opportunity to speak to this motion and I’ll appreciate my colleagues’ support. Mahsi.