Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The Minister of Transportation, Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. A joint venture group has been building the secondary winter road on the Ingraham Trail to handle the increased traffic. However, the department understands that they will not be constructing that road, or unlikely that they will be constructing that road. The department’s first priority is safety and we will be looking at stepping up some of the highway patrols there and putting some people on there for security for 24 hours a day during the winter road season. However, the road is being rebuilt and I’m not sure that the increased traffic is going to do damage to the main road to Tibbett.

Thanks to the Minister for that response. I’m glad to hear he’s all over the safety issue. That’s number one, of course, and that happens with this increased traffic now on the Ingraham Trail.

I’m sad to hear confirmation that the secondary road will not be built and I hope the Minister will look into working with industry to see if he can get them to put it in. We do a number of things,

because, I mean, it’s clear that this damage does happen with truck traffic. Any resident out there and the Department of Highways can tell you. We do things in a number of different ways up here. The winter road to the diamond mines is paid for by the mines, while the Ingraham Trail is paid for by the GNWT, the Mackenzie bridge, a combination of trucking tolls and government funding.

Can the Minister explain his understanding of how this should work? Should industry pay for what industry uses or should the public pay for everything? Mahsi.

Thank you. Although I haven’t gotten into the details, how I think it should work is if industry is bringing a lot of resources into the Territories, then the government should be there to support industry to allow industry easy access to resources so they’re able to pay for the resources that are taken off the land. Thank you.

Thank you. On our trip to North Dakota, we saw that fracking requires a huge number of trucks; so many trucks that they were wearing 10-inch-deep ruts in the asphalt and causing the state to go to concrete road construction at substantial cost. Now this government is promoting fracking for the Sahtu.

How does the Minister plan to ensure the public roads we have already built are not destroyed and the public is not paying for roads and repairs that should be paid for by the extraction industry? Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can confirm that residents, based on 15 years of real experience, are very concerned. I hope the Minister also becomes concerned about this.

Could the Minister please explain how that same philosophy that industry should contribute to the cost of roads they are using and degrading, how has that been applied in the case of the new Inuvik to Tuk all-weather road? How will industry contribute? Mahsi.

Thank you. From what I understand, the Inuvik-Tuk highway is funded heavily by the federal government. The intention there is not solely for the extraction of materials. That highway is not going to be in and specifically designed for the resource developers to use. It is there to put a highway in to the Arctic Ocean.

So for sure resource developers will be using it, but it’s funded… Again, the majority of that road is funded by the federal government. They put the money in there. That’s why the road is being built, but it’s not really tied into the resource extraction in that area. Thank you.