Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate the discussion that‘s just been had and I‘d like to just make a couple of comments and ask a question. First of all, I appreciate the deputy minister‘s recognition of the safety issue and his mention that really the best thing is to get people off the road, like, right away from that. There‘s no safe place to cross, Ms. Bisaro and the Minister are right, but there‘s also no safe place to walk on that highway and there are no options, so people have to and they are doing that. So it‘s a very unsafe situation. I know the deputy minister and Minister realize that.
Niven Lake is a young neighbourhood that‘s growing quickly. Given that we‘re between a rock and a hard spot in terms of time and expense and the schedule, despite the eight years of bringing this forward in the House, can the Minister work with the City of Yellowknife on the pedestrian issue and establish a walking trail off the highway and provide a simple pedestrian-operated, button-operated yellow light that will alert people who want to cross, probably located right at the Legislative Assembly junction with our access road and the Niven to town highway.
I don‘t see this being tremendously expensive, but it‘s a solution that could be done on a shorter term. Finally, with respect to the expense, I believe the City of Yellowknife would be more than happy and more than interested to have some discussions on putting a simple interim solution like that in place. I would imagine a walking path would be useful in the longer term as well.
I know this has been raised repeatedly by the city as wanting to do something. They say they‘re harried, they‘re frustrated in the transfer that hasn‘t taken place where they‘re waiting for that to happen. So there is an opportunity here. It‘s a modest opportunity to deal with the safety issue both for walkers, pedestrians, young people, young families and the crossing. Thank you.