Members’ Statements MEMBER’S STATEMENT ON INUVIK TO TUKTOYAKTUK HIGHWAY

Members’ Statements

MEMBER’S STATEMENT ON
INUVIK TO TUKTOYAKTUK HIGHWAY

Living in the Delta, I see all kinds of business going to the Yukon because the Dempster Highway is our supplier. I see millions of dollars going down the road every year, Mr. Speaker. We need that business and economic opportunity in our territory. The Beaufort-Delta region badly needs a boost to its economy and people need jobs so they can support their families. The unemployment level in most of our communities is terrible, at 35 percent.

As you know, creating jobs is one way we can build safe and sustainable communities, one of this government’s main priorities. By building the road to Tuk, we will create lots of jobs. The question is who’s going to do them. Will our people in the Beaufort-Delta be ready for those jobs?

I’m worried that we are behind on providing education and training to prepare the Delta workforce to get well-paying highway jobs that should be available for many years to come. For example, there should be Class 1 driving courses in every community every few months.

Appropriate courses should be delivered through the community learning centres, but some are not very active and in some communities they don’t even exist. Current high school students should be ready and able to handle the future jobs. The community schools are under-resourced and graduation rates could be a lot better.

Support for students who have completed high school in Inuvik is another big problem. If this territory is going to prosper, and if our people are going to prosper, we have to improve our education and training.

I’ll be asking the Education, Culture and Employment Minister about that later today. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Thank you, Mr. Blake. Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.

MEMBER'S STATEMENT ON
MEDICAL AGREEMENT WITH BC HEALTH

Saying that, there is always room for improvement, and I would like to suggest some changes that would both help out the people of Fort Liard and probably lower the cost of health care and medical travel in my region.

It is one of the goals of our health system to deliver as much care as close to home as possible and I very much agree with this. For people in Fort Liard, that means getting some of their health services in Fort Nelson, British Columbia. Right now residents of Fort Liard often use their own resources and just drive south for certain services. It is only 210 from Liard to Fort Nelson, and I might add that the road is better, too, compared to the 284 kilometres on Highway No. 7 to Fort Simpson. It is not uncommon for Liard patients to be flown to Yellowknife, which is 780 kilometres away. If it is not absolutely necessary, this is both inconvenient to patients and expensive to our health system.

For example, a constituent can say his knee hurts, he is sent to Yellowknife and sees a doctor who confirms that his knee hurts, and then sent home to await a more rigorous appointment. This, as I say, can be done closer to home in Fort Nelson.

I would like to see an agreement between the Health and Social Services and the BC Health ministry that allows seamless care that is invoiced to our health system. As it is now, it is not fair to those people in Fort Liard who are covering the costs of their own trips to Fort Nelson.

I see the current budget includes expanding the use of electronic medical records. This should make it easier to manage the arrangement I propose. Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker.

MEMBER'S STATEMENT ON
INUVIK TO TUKTOYAKTUK HIGHWAY

I’d like to also talk about the Inuvik-Tuk highway. I am not categorically dismissing it as a good idea, but there are certainly some very big questions that need to be asked before I can personally endorse a project of this magnitude.

The cost-benefit analysis of a piece of infrastructure of this expense at this time in this area needs to be very critically looked at, and I do hear the plight of the Inuvik area, the Inuvik region, in terms of the economic downtown, the conditions there. I do not think that a $300 million road project to create economy is the answer to that situation, not in and of itself.

I hear the federal government say that they want to be able to say that they have highway infrastructure coast to coast to coast. That’s a very lofty goal, an admirable goal, but our government is necessarily being called upon to participate in this project at least with 25 percent of the capital cost and who knows how much on the ongoing operations and maintenance of that highway.

We have Highway No. 7. We hear our colleague from Nahendeh stand up session after session and talk about the lack of maintenance and upkeep on a highway in his region. We heard many times from folks that represent the Mackenzie Delta about the conditions of the Dempster Highway and how this government does not have enough resources to maintain and upkeep that highway, and now we want to build another piece of highway infrastructure. We need to do so by first very seriously counting the costs of what the use will be and what the ongoing costs of that are.

I look at the latest major highway project this government overtook, which was from the Rae turnoff to Yellowknife, and no offense to the Department of Transportation, but they were building a highway in the Canadian Shield where they had unlimited access to rock they could crush to put a proper bed in that road, and that road is beyond disgusting. I think they started rebuilding the road the day after they built it. That was a $200 million project in this part of the country where they didn’t have to deal with permafrost and all the challenges that they will have to deal with up in the Beaufort-Delta area.

So we have to ask ourselves some very hard questions, regardless of the fact that it is on sale at 75 percent off. It will still be a piece of infrastructure that we will be responsible for and we have to look at this very critically. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.