MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

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 the residents of Labrador.

Mr. Speaker, the residents of Labrador, especially in the Lake Melville area, the South Coast of Labrador, and the Labrador Straits region, and the Labrador West area, are totally dependent upon a highway connection now in and out of Labrador. Mr. Speaker, they rely upon this road network to get them to the Island portion of the Province, to get their goods and services in, to get out to hospitals, to get out for other reasons as well. Mr. Speaker, they expect their government to maintain this highway to a standard that is acceptable for people to travel over, to a standard that is only acceptable elsewhere in Newfoundland and Labrador and elsewhere in this country. They want to see their highways paved, Mr. Speaker. They are tired of driving over gravel ridden roads that are filled with potholes, filled with deep ridges.

Everyday in my office I get e-mails from people from all over Labrador who have had to drive that road. Every single day the horror stories of how long it took them to drive from Happy Valley-Goose Bay down to the Cartwright Junction, or how long it took them to drive from Cartwright into Mary’s Harbour or Lodge Bay, or down to get the ferry in the Labrador Straits because the road was so bad.

Mr. Speaker, this time of the year, of course, on any gravel road you expect to have extreme conditions. You are getting the snow melt, you are getting runoff from that, you are getting a lot of the gravel washed out of the roads, you are getting soft roads, and you are getting tractor-trailers and other big heavy vehicles that are travelling over this road leaving ruts in the road. All of these things are contributing to people being very, very frustrated, very frustrated, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MS JONES: They expect the government to respond to what their need is. They were very disappointed, Mr. Speaker, disappointed in the Minister of Labrador, disappointed in the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs, who is from Labrador, disappointed in the Minister of Transportation and Works, simply because they have indicated to the people, the Minister of Transportation in a meeting in Goose Bay, that this is not on the radar of government. They are not even going to look at this until 2014.

Well, do you know something? Today, there are hundreds of thousands of pounds of freight coming in from the Island portion of the Province into Labrador that years ago was coming out of Quebec. Today it is coming from wholesale companies on the Island of Newfoundland. Do you think these tractor-trailers want to be driving all of that freight over bad roads? Do you think people want to be dragging goods and services into an area when every day they are doing damages on their vehicles and their cost of maintenance is overriding what their cost of profits are on some occasions? No, that is unacceptable.

Do we want people in Labrador to start turning again back to Quebec to import all of our goods and services? Absolutely not! We want to be able to deal with our brothers and sisters on the Island portion of the Province but we want to be able to have a good transportation network to do it, and that means we need a good ferry service on the Strait of Belle Isle. It means we need to have good roads across Labrador, so not only Labradorians but all Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, Mr. Speaker, can enjoy the privileges, the benefits and the opportunities that comes with having good transportation networks.