Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m going to ask questions to the Minister of Transportation. Just before I do that, of course, I’d like to send a little hello and a shout out to Patrick Joss who is watching our proceedings here all the way in Ulukhaktok. It’s really exciting that we have people watching.
Speaking of people watching, many of the people I had talked to in Gameti wanted to know when the Tulita winter road would be worked on as a capital project and when would money be put into the capital plan so they can eventually see the Tulita winter road connect from Highway No. 3 all the way to at least Whati.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The Minister of Transportation, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’ve done a considerable amount of work in the plan to build an all-season road off of Highway No. 3 to Whati. It’s one of the roads where we have a group working on it, GNWT and the Tlicho government. This is something that we are looking at. I don’t have the exact status as of today, but there are some requirements that need to be filled prior to this going forward in the capital plan and we’re working on those requirements now.
I think I was reading in the Huffington Post a few weeks ago about how important connecting communities to road infrastructure is and how it changes the life when it comes to cost of living. It adds benefits such as regular fuel supply, regular grocery supply and certainly family connections. I could go on about the merits, but the question really is when can we expect to see it in the capital plan to help lower the costs of communities like that, that are so close to the highway? We could make a real difference and a dent in the cost of living in their lives. We should be on this.
We’ve certainly talked about the highway a lot. I can’t give a definite date on how close we are, but we consider that to be one of the roads. We have a few roads right now. We have a proposal into the federal government on the Mackenzie Valley Highway, so we’re looking at that as well as a couple of other all-season roads.
I want to assure my good friends from the Sahtu that I’m not wanting to take away from their road. I think the Mackenzie Valley Highway merits stand on their own. This road would provide close community access to major infrastructure and connect family, food, people, everything. You name it, it comes with all the fantastic benefits.
Certainly if we had the money to do all the roads we would be able to do it. The Whati all-season road has a price tag of about $150 million to go from Highway No. 3. It’s approximately 105 kilometres into Whati. There are certainly benefits to doing that. Again, it’s tied into our capital, our ability to borrow the money if need be. So, that affects the borrowing limit of the GNWT. We’d like to do all these roads, but we have to put them into some sort of priority as the borrowing limit makes the decision on whether or not we have the money to borrow to build these highways. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Is the GNWT willing to put, sort of, money where their mouth is and start to make a commitment to the engineering and the environmental assessment on this particular project so we are able to get this off the ground so when the federal government does get off and make a decision and finally agree that this is an important highway to connect people and families and certainly put industry together and create a window of opportunity for people to go to work?
Is the GNWT placed in order to be able to respond in a timely way to these important things? Thank you.
Like I indicated, we are doing a lot of the legwork, environmental assessment. We’ve looked at some of the roads, some of the planning that’s needed to build the highway to Whati. However, it’s based on whether or not we have the ability to borrow money to build that road. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
