Mr. Speaker, the construction of the Mackenzie Valley Highway has the potential to be a very important project for the Northwest Territories and, I think, would go a long way into some of the Premier’s initiatives that he spoke about.
I would like to direct my question today to the Premier. I’d like to ask him if, in his meeting with Prime Minister Harper, there was any discussion of a Mackenzie Valley Highway.
Mr. Speaker, with what we’ve proposed and previous governments have proposed — for example, in the document called Corridors for Canada — a number of infrastructure pieces were included in that.
My discussion with the Prime Minister did highlight the fact that if we are to take advantage of the economic opportunities available in the Northwest Territories, we need to get key pieces of infrastructure like the Mackenzie Valley Highway. We need to work around that. We need to build on the partnerships through industry and the federal government. We know ourselves that there is no way that we would be able to afford to build this unless we put a 70-year time span on this, to try to do something — or even longer.
I would like to ask the Premier if that document he mentioned and provided to Ottawa, was that our formal request to Ottawa for funding to construct the highway.
If I understand that question correctly, the Corridors for Canada was part of our work in establishing projects with partnerships, in the sense of putting all this together with all jurisdictions. That was our contribution to that piece. The request was put on the table, and the formal response…. They have dealt with pieces of it from time to time.
I believe there is renewed interest in this area. Looking at the resources being taken out of the North, they should be reinvested in key infrastructure projects in the Northwest Territories.
That kind of leads to my next question. Who at the end of the day would be responsible for the funding of the construction of the Mackenzie Valley Highway?
Mr. Speaker, as we are aware, any new highway construction outside of the existing infrastructure that we have right now falls into the area of the federal government. They have kept up that area of authority, so we would say that has to be looked at. That’s why we are talking about a partnership and having the federal government come to the table.
We believe this should also deal with the issue of Arctic sovereignty by having key infrastructure in place, by building on the economic development opportunities in the North and by keeping communities sustainable. This is how we can help the federal government in its challenge of Arctic sovereignty and its people.
Final supplementary, Mr. McLeod.
I thank the Premier for that.
I would like to ask the Premier how we can help Ottawa make up their mind. Does this government have the authority, or could we introduce legislation, called the Mackenzie Valley Highway Act that would help in our case with Ottawa?
Mr. Speaker, we can look at introducing a piece of legislation that would affect us. We couldn’t introduce legislation that would make the federal government do something, but we could look at doing something that we would end up venturing into the area that the federal government right now holds as authority. If we decided to invest in this project, then we are entering into that field on our own.
Time for question period has expired.
