Thanks, Madam Chair. So this past summer, I had a chance to drive out to Fort Simpson, down to Fort Smith, so got to see a big part of our highway system firsthand. And parts of it were in good shape and parts of it are definitely not in good shape, particularly the part between the junction where Highway 3 goes off towards Fort Providence and off to Fort Simpson, there's a stretch in the middle there that is not very -- in my opinion, actually quite unsafe. And I just don't know why we keep building new roads when we can't even properly maintain and fix up the ones we've got.
And then my colleague from Monfwi talked about how there's concerns with public safety once the road to Whati is opened. I've got concerns that I'll be bringing forward in terms of readiness for harvesting, wildlife harvesting along the road. We don't seem to work, or support communities when roads get built to them, and Tuk being a good example and I think Whati is going to be the same story all over again.
But I do have some specific questions in here. The Whati access road, you know, I've been a Member for six years now and I only found out maybe a year ago that the Tlicho all-season road doesn't even go to a community, that it actually ends up outside of Whati and that, as I think the former MLA for Monfwi described the access road as "a moose path."
So I see that there's money in here now to fix this up. I just find this astounding that we don't even build a road right to a community but how much now is this access road going to cost that's in the budget here. Thanks, Madam Chair.