Michael McLeod

Mr. Speaker, we’ve incorporated a four-year plan to deal with the issue that the Member’s raising on Highway No. 1 from the border to Enterprise and further down towards Highway No. 3. The road width is, I think, eight metres and we are planning to expand and widen the road to a 12-metre roadway system that will allow us to park on the shoulders. We’re also looking at ways to incorporate a number of pull-offs that would assist people that are travelling and want to rest or stop for various reasons. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, there is currently public highway regulations along this stretch of highway. As I stated earlier, we do not have high volume traffic on this area. We don’t currently have any enforcement on this stretch of road. The Member has invited me to take a look at it. I would be pleased to look at this portion of highway at my earliest convenience. However, having said that, land rovers, other vehicles or ATVs would not be prohibited from travelling on a section of road. It is a public piece of highway. If there are vehicles that are going off the highway and especially ATVs travelling off...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there is a stretch of road from the Yukon border, roughly 14 kilometres that is referred to as the Canol Road. In theory, I guess, the Public Highways Act and Motor Vehicles Act applies to this portion of road. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, that’s a difficult question to answer at this point. We are still doing a lot of work on the Highway No. 7 section, including an engineering assessment and functional design. We’re also doing some of the necessary material preparation, crushing of the kilometre 3 and doing some of the upgrades that are required.

As to doing some actual chipseal, maybe. It’s not something that we’ve decided as of yet. It’s something that we’d like to do. Chipseal, of course, is something that really is dependent on the base and we’d have to be convinced that the road is going to hold up. It will be...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d have to go to the department and confirm, but I believe the project has been deferred until next year. There was some concern, as the season progressed, with the amount of rain that we got and the saturation that the road became. Mr. Speaker, it’s something that we’d still like to move forward on. There were questions raised by the Member on some of the other projects in his riding, including Highway No. 7 that we had to defer. It’s really unfortunate; however, we can’t control the weather, and we’ll commit to having those projects moved forward as soon as possible...

Mr. Speaker, as of now, the request for a camera at the ferry crossing has been something we were considering. We don’t have it built into our budget yet, but we certainly can take a look at it.

Yes, we continue to look at ways to expand our information collection through the intelligent systems that we have. If the Member had driven in, I am not sure if she drove into Yellowknife yesterday, but as she turned onto Highway No. 3, her vehicle would have been weighed, her speed recorded and the classification all documented. We have cameras on Highway No. 3. We have two cameras set up in...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member raises an important safety concern that we have on all our highways, especially the highways that have chipseal. We have been looking at a number of ways to try to deal with this issue, and then try to raise the awareness through the public and the people on the highway system during the times when we have challenges. We’ve incorporated a maintenance schedule that would allow us to have staff on the highway system seven days a week so that they can closely monitor, especially during the winter months, the events that are happening.

We’ve also brought on stream...

Mr. Speaker, I had indicated earlier that I would be pleased to talk to the people of the Sahtu as to their desire to see if there is any way to upgrading this road or provide provisions that would allow us to look at what we can do or at least look at the options. This is a 14-kilometre road. I am not sure if I have as much free time as the Member to walk a whole 14 kilometres. I have committed that I would look at the situation. I would be pleased to look at the portion of road that he is referring to and try to do a visit and maybe at the time when he is walking, we can coordinate our...

Certainly we probably could provide that up front, the actual cost of runway lighting in both these communities. We need some resolution to how we can deal with the maintenance issues and then we could pick the next step to consider whether that would be enough for us to invest in those two communities to put the runway lights back in.

Up to now flare pots have been the safest course to use in the landing and darkness and it’s also been something that removes the safety concern of having lights that are on Transport Canada’s list that do not work and are damaged on a regular basis. So we need...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Currently there is no runway lighting in the communities of Nahanni Butte and Jean Marie. We continue to use flare pots. We have, historically, installed runway lights and in both communities. They were damaged on many occasions and it was decided to remove them. It is a safety concern with the federal government when we list a runway as having permanent lighting and they don’t work due to damage, and if they’re not consistently operational we certainly would be responsible for some liability in that area. So until we can find a solution as to having lighting in those...