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Petition
Presented September 9, 2009
Paving the Highway from Red Bay to Cartwright
as part of the Trans-Labrador Highway
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| In the House | Petitions
MR. SPEAKER: Further
petitions?
The hon. the Leader of
the Opposition.
MS JONES: Thank
you, Mr. Speaker.
I stand today to present
a petition on behalf of constituents in my District of
Cartwright-L’Anse au Clair. Mr. Speaker, they are
asking government to look at paving the highway from Red
Bay to Cartwright as part of the Trans-Labrador Highway.
Mr. Speaker, they
obviously feel that with the opening of the highway into
Goose Bay and the other sections of the road in Labrador
being scheduled for paving, that this needs to be done,
and I totally support them. If we are going to open up
all of Labrador to the highway connection, we need to
ensure that these roads are going to be paved. Not just
built and left for another twenty years before they are
actually dealt with.
Mr. Speaker, people in
the district were not at all pleased when they heard the
response from government, that it could be up to 2015 or
longer before there would even be anything earmarked for
paving in that part of Labrador. We think that the
provincial government should be negotiating with the
federal government now on agreements to pave the entire
Trans-Labrador Highway. We think that should be one of
the priorities that is on their agenda. We know that the
relationship, Mr. Speaker, is not a good one. We know
that other provinces across Canada are securing major
amounts of money for infrastructure, especially for road
infrastructure and for paving and for bridges and so on.
We think that if the Province of Newfoundland and
Labrador was to go forward and start the negotiation,
that maybe we could see pavement a whole lot earlier in
that area of Labrador as well.
Mr. Speaker, if there is
no effort, if there is no effort going to be made than
people are going to be waiting an awful long time. It is
just like the people in Northern Labrador, Mr. Speaker,
that are looking to get a study done into building a
highway into their communities. Something like $300,000
they are looking for, and they cannot even get that
money out of the provincial government. I think that
people in the District of Cartwright-L’Anse au Clair,
and I certainly agree and share with them that this is a
major issue; that we need to have some negotiation
around the paving of those particular sections of road,
and the only way it is going to happen is if the
provincial government goes forward with a proposal to
the federal government in which they are prepared as a
Province to put up a certain amount of money. Everywhere
else in the Province we have paved roads. It should be
no different in Labrador. It should be absolutely no
different in Labrador, and it should not be a case of
where: we built you a road, now take it and leave it. It
should be a case, Mr. Speaker, of where we have built
you a road and now we are going to go out and we are
going to find the money to pave it as soon as we
possibly can, but that is not the response that we are
getting. It is nowhere near the response we are getting.
In fact, there are gravel
roads in Labrador today that have not had a single bit
of gravel placed on them in the last seven or eight
years.
MR. SPEAKER: Order,
please!
I ask the hon. member to
conclude her remarks.
MS JONES: Thank
you, Mr. Speaker.
So it just goes to show
what the priority is to those roads, Mr. Speaker. Yes, I
know we are building the highway. We were the government
that secured the money for it in the first place, Mr.
Speaker, and we are building a lot of it with federal
money and everybody knows that. But where is the
commitment to the provincial roads? We have not seen
that either in the last year.
MR. SPEAKER: Order,
please! |
