MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I stand today to present a petition on behalf of the people in Labrador with regard to the Trans-Labrador Highway.

WHEREAS the Trans-Labrador Highway is a vital transportation lifeline for the Labrador communities, providing access, generating economic activity, and allowing residents to obtain health care and other public services; and

Mr. Speaker, this is one of many petitions that I have presented in the House of Assembly on behalf of people in communities from various regions of Labrador. Mr. Speaker, you will notice from the petitions that they are signed by people from the Island portion of the Province as well. That is because once you cross the Strait of Belle Isle and you get in Blanc-Sablon and the Quebec side, then the access to Labrador is by road, the entire highway network.

People who are doing business in Labrador, no matter what business they are in, they have to have their merchandise, their goods, all trucked into Labrador. People are using this road on a daily basis. There is any number of tractor-trailers that are travelling over it. There are all kinds of people who are using it and travelling over it. Mr. Speaker, the roads are not being maintained to a standard that is acceptable.

In fact, Mr. Speaker, despite the fact that government is paying for grader operators, graders, and contracts on a daily basis, there are many of them out there telling me they are grading this road every single day. Yet, there is no stone left on the road to grade. In most cases, you have bedrock coming up through the road. They are actually hitting the rocks with their blades. There are workers now, Mr. Speaker, grader operators who are actually off sick with bad backs and bad necks because they have injured themselves in trying to carry out their work on that particular road.

In addition to that, Mr. Speaker, there are so many people who live in the area who have no other option only to use that road. They do not have any other options. If they have to go to hospital, they have to drive out in many cases. If they have to come home from hospital, like the patient I talked about yesterday who could not be transported by ambulance because the road was so bad, they had to be flown back into their community.

Mr. Speaker, is that acceptable for people who live in that particular area? They have asked the government, in a meeting of their leadership of different communities around Labrador, to look at paving this section of road. The government has said no, it is not on our radar, and we are not going to put it on our radar until 2014. Mr. Speaker, that is unacceptable to people who live there. They want to have their roads addressed and they want to have it done immediately. At the very least, government should be looking at where they are going to approve crushed stone for that section of road this year so that you can grade it and maintain it like a proper gravel road should be. People cannot be expected to continue to travel over these sections of road without having them maintained and looked after properly. It is far too dangerous and it is not acceptable.