Mr. Chairperson (Ben Sveinson): Will the Committee of Supply please come to order. This section of the Committee of Supply will be considering the Estimates of the Department of Highways and Transportation. Does the honourable minister responsible have an opening statement?

Hon. Darren Praznik (Minister of Highways and Transportation): Yes, I do. I know, Mr. Chair, you would be disappointed as the new minister if I–the critic may want to relax, order coffee.

First of all, it is an honour and a privilege for me to be here for my first year in Estimates as Minister of Highways and Transportation for our province. I must admit it is a very different portfolio from the one in which I sat at this table last year, that being Health. But I must say that it is very enjoyable to be at something different. I have always enjoyed working with infrastructure and economic issues on the transportation side, so I am quite enjoying this new portfolio.

For the 1999-2000 fiscal year, expenditure estimates total $238.7 million, which represents an increase of just over $5.9 million over the previous fiscal year. Our highway construction budget, at $110.5 million, is an increase of $.4 million over 1998-99. I wish, of course, it were larger, as Minister of Highways. As we will discuss a little later on in my statement, I think the members recognize a need to see a federal commitment in this area, given this very significant amount of revenue that national government raises off of our transportation system.

Our maintenance program of some $59.6 million represents an increase of $1.5 million over '98-99. There have been no reductions to the 2,189.96 full-time equivalent staff of this department. The Manitoba government has approved new highway construction projects worth $104 million in addition to the $107 million in ongoing projects previously approved, for a total investment of $211 million over the next two years.

These projects will improve the safety and efficiency of our provincial road and highway network while providing approximately 3,590 jobs in the heavy construction sector. The details of these projects we will get to later on in my presentation.

Last year's accomplishments for the department include, of course, the $110-million construction program, which included $10 million from the capital innovation initiative fund. We completed paving on 193.7 kilometres of provincial roads and highways. We started paving an additional 56.7 kilometres. We upgraded 102.6 kilometres of gravel roads. We upgraded or rebuilt six major and 14 minor structures. We sealcoated 670 kilometres of surfaced road and applied extra gravel and calcium chloride to 590 kilometres of gravel road to stabilize their surfaces.

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A $58-million maintenance program included $40 million for surface repairs, roadside care, bridge maintenance, and maintaining traffic control devices, all very important; $18 million was spent for winter snow and ice control; and an additional $3.5 million was allocated to repair severe surface breaks caused by the 1998 spring thaw.

The dilemma for us in infrastructure is the major challenge facing the transportation industry today and into the next century. That, of course, is the deterioration of the nation's transportation infrastructure, particularly our highway network. Even despite our expenditure level, I am probably one of the first to admit that our highway system looks tired.

Mr. Chair, 23 percent of our hard-surfaced roads are currently deficient; 71 percent of gravel roads require upgrading to meet existing safety and loading standards; and 17 percent of our bridges and other structures have surpassed their normal life expectancy.

Over the past six years, Manitoba expenditures on highways and road-related activities have approximately equalled provincial revenue collected in road-use fuel taxes. From the '92-93 fiscal year to the '97-98 fiscal year, Manitoba collected an average of $190.2 million in road-use taxes and spent an average of $191.2 million on highways and road-related programs. These expenditures include, for the interests of accuracy, grants to the City of Winnipeg from Urban Affairs, the infrastructure works program and expenditures by other departments on road infrastructure such as Manitoba Natural Resources for roads in provincial parks. Manitoba has maintained its construction budget at around the $100-million, now $110-million mark, while other provinces cut road spending quite severely during this period. Almost 70 percent of our construction budget is spent on maintaining the existing system. The remaining 30 percent is for upgrading the system, which includes engineering costs, land-acquisition costs, road widening and strengthening costs to enable roads to carry loads to the TAC standards.

Almost all funding for Manitoba's highways comes from the government of Manitoba. In the context of government priorities and fiscal control challenges and the demands placed upon us by members of the opposition almost daily in the Legislature, we are spending what is available to us as efficiently as possible. There are contending forces for available extra expenditure. As I have indicated, each day, hardly an exception, the opposition, members of the public call for more spending in health. Education and basic social services also receive demand for more dollars. In the great public debate, infrastructure rarely seems to be high on the public's and the opposition's agenda.

These are contending forces, and in difficult times, as we have been in the last decade, regrettably infrastructure has not been viewed necessarily by the public as a high priority as health and other areas. The department is currently exploring alternative highway financing options, investigating how other jurisdictions are addressing the problem, and participating on a federal-provincial-territorial committee examining the feasibility of various partnerships to build roads. But I want to say very clearly to my critic that toll roads do not form in any way part of the policy of this government for financing our road system.

The federal government, Mr. Chair, is a jurisdiction that has to accept now some of its responsibility in the area of transportation. Federal government policy decisions, the elimination of the Western Grain Transportation subsidy, the elimination of subsidies to branchline railroads and a variety of other things have resulted in an increased traffic flow on our roads. At the same time, the federal government collects, on average in Manitoba from '92-93 to '97-98, $132.7 million annually from fuel taxes in our province. This year that should be somewhere in the neighbourhood of $147 million in fuel taxes. During the same period, '92-93 to '97-98, the federal contribution to Manitoba's road system averaged only $5.8 million annually or 4.4 percent of revenue collected from Manitoba motorists.

In the '98-99 fiscal year, the federal government collected, as I have indicated, somewhere between $145-147 million in Manitoba in fuel taxes and invested absolutely nothing in the Manitoba highway system.

The U.S. federal government today is investing $217 billion beginning now and over the next six years in its already superior highway system, enhancing its productivity advantage, drawing Canadian highway users to their system in cross-continental travel and diverting their travel-related economic activity from Canada.

The federal government must make a reasonable and responsible contribution to a national highway program through the road fuel taxes it currently collects or vacate the tax field to enable the provinces to solve the problem themselves. The government, as I have indicated, of Manitoba opposes any increase in gasoline taxes, toll roads or other user-pay initiatives to pay for a national highway program. Manitoba strongly advocates that the national highway system be funded from the existing level of highway-use related revenue.

Mr. Chair, it is important to look at the sustainability of our highway system. In doing so, to appreciate that unless our transportation infrastructure has access to a sustainable ongoing source of revenue, it will continue to decline on a regular basis. As minister, I have become a very strong advocate for the dedication of fuel taxes to maintaining that highway system.

I want to say to my critic, the need to dedicate becomes very important. I know we as a government are certainly now looking at this in a very, very serious way. I have certainly been advocating, and the Minister of Finance (Mr. Gilleshammer) and I have had discussions about it, but the need to dedicate those taxes to provide the discipline for supporting that highway infrastructure is critical.

As I have said before, in Manitoba today, the cost of maintaining our road system versus what we collect off of it, when we sort of do the calculation because there are some parts that are not borne directly by the Department of Highways, obviously the cost of policing roads is one of them. We look at the revenues we derive off that system; we are virtually awash. Manitoba already now is dedicating the revenues we derive, not directly but indirectly, dedicating those to supporting that system and to call upon the national government to do the same with their 140, this year 47 million, that they will collect, I think, certainly offers us a vehicle to ensure a financial sustainability to our highway system, and obviously the municipalities have to be part of that.

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Mr. Chair, if the federal government is not interested, we ask they vacate their system. We do say that there is a role for the national government to play in the development of our national highway system in ensuring that we are building the east-west arteries of trade and commerce and of travel that Canadians want to make sure dollars out of these now federal revenues are dedicated to that role. There is also a role for the national government to ensure that our southern Canada border links are properly built and developed to support our growing commerce in the North American marketplace, and that our southern Canada to northern Canada transportation links are developed to take advantage of the great opportunities still to come out of Canada's northland and be developed there. There is a role for the national government. If they refuse to do nothing, they should at least get out of the way and abandon the tax room. Our preference would be that they be at the table and involved just as municipalities need to be for their share of our national or our provincial transportation system and the roles that they play.

So this is becoming certainly a role for us. I would report to the committee as well that the discussion of a national highways program by the national government is certainly welcome, but if it is to be one-time payment, yes, we will take the money and we will use it, but it will not solve the problems facing us unless we have a sustainable ongoing source of funding to ensure we were doing regular work on maintaining and developing our transportation network.

My fear with the national highways program as a one-time program over one or two years is that the national government would then say: we have done our share, we solved the problem–and walk away. Just as they had a health budget a couple of years ago: there, we solved the problem. Just as they have had an education budget: there, we solved the problem. We can hear them saying: we will have a transportation budget, there, we solved the problem. In the end of the day, they have only helped for those years, and they walk away still leaving significant issues in health and education and in transportation to the provincial partners in this federation.

Mr. Chair, I ask my colleague, and I know he has asked me questions in the House, I ask him and his party to be supportive of this initiative as we move forward. There are a number of other areas that this department is certainly involved in. Northern airports, the need again, because many of those communities that are serviced by them are First Nations communities where there is a fiduciary federal responsibility. It is important for us to develop partnerships. Our airports capital budget has been increased by $1 million to help address some of the capital improvement projects identified by the provincial airports working group. Certainly, safety is a very important issue to us within the resources that are available, and we again will need to have those federal partners at the table.

In the very important trucking industry, we have reviews underway regarding whether Manitoba should discontinue the issuance of operating authorities or combine them into a single document along with a safety certificate. We are looking at a number of changes to The Highway Traffic Act with respect to vehicle weights not being dependent on the classification of the transportation service or business, things that would make more common sense based on actual damage or role those vehicles play on the roadway as opposed to their particular classification or use. We certainly want to continue to ensure that with larger vehicles on our roads that safety is an important aspect, that the roads remain safe for all motorists, and that the large carriers are able to certainly be handled safely on our roadways.

One very important issue, I think, to the province in terms of the trucking industry is regulatory harmonization. When we look today at our nation, we have different regulatory regimes across the land, which I think does nothing to further the national trade and trucking industry. As a province that hosts a significant portion of the national trucking industry, it is certainly in our interest to ensure that Manitoba trucks and truckers can move freely in a harmonized regulatory system across the width and breadth of this nation. I would hope that, as the Minister of Highways, we can reach agreements on an all-Canadian basis that will eventually see vehicles subject, of course, to some unique geographic and climatic conditions in various parts of the country, be able to be licensed and regulated by the same scheme across this country, so that trucks can roll without having to worry about different licensing regimes and find paperwork and regulatory barriers in their way from carrying the commerce of our nation.

If we do not move quickly on this as provinces, Mr. Chair, and territories, we will be overtaken I am sure by the same desire to see harmonization on a North American basis which will certainly be required as we see the North American trade group of countries grow and develop their commerce. The lesson to us as Canadians is to get our own act together quickly in the regulatory field, because we certainly will be called upon I think in the not too distant future to see harmonization on a North American basis. As a province that is host to a very significant portion of the northern North American highway trucking industry, being able to see our trucking companies and our truckers travel again the width and breadth of this continent under a common regulatory scheme is, I think, critical to ensuring that our trucking industry grows and prospers in carrying the goods of other North Americans around North America and bringing their paycheques and taxes home to Manitoba. So it is very critical for us to see this happen.

On the grain transportation side, this department is certainly involved in the report of Mr. Justice Estey on the review of the grain transportation system. As in all things, this is a very complex matter. We applaud the effort to bring a review of the grain transportation system which virtually every farm organization has said is inadequate, and now that the subsidy on grain transportation has been removed, the farmers of our province are paying for. I think they are demanding efficiencies in that system.

I say this to the member that the No. 1 prerequisite for Manitoba's involvement in this process is that the savings resulting from the efficiencies are returned to the producer, that if the Estey process does not result in savings to the producer, then it will probably die the death of so many other reports. But ultimately, much is dependent upon it. We are very pleased to see, and as western provinces including the New Democratic governments in Saskatchewan and British Columbia, along with our colleagues in Alberta, we all called for, met with the federal minister, the appointment of a facilitator to put flesh on the bones of the Estey report.

I know that my critic's party has taken the position of opposing Estey outright. We disagreed with that. We think we should go the next stage to put details around the concepts and not condemn the concepts until we see what they would look like. I note that the Legislature defeated by a very significant margin the resolution which would have called for our total withdrawal from any involvement in this process.

But we are there, like our fellow western provinces, being part of it now as the concepts are fleshed out, meat is put on the bone. A the end of the day, when that process is reported, we will then see what this will look like. We can then, I think, cast a more educated and reasoned judgment on Estey, rather than the kind of quick preliminary judgment that my critic and his colleagues passed and urged the government of Manitoba to also do last week.

So there is a great deal of work to be done in this area, and I look forward to working with my colleagues, the ministers from the Saskatchewan, British Columbia and Alberta, in the weeks ahead as this process rolls on.

We are also pleased in the railway area to see the creation of a number of short lines in Manitoba. Obviously the Hudson's Bay railroad, that I know affects the member for Flin Flon's (Mr. Jennissen) constituency, the Sherridon subdivision, is proving to be quite successful from all reports that I have seen recently. Regrettably, or perhaps not regrettably, it is a federal jurisdiction railway because of the small part of track that runs through Saskatchewan. Although we passed some years ago short-line legislation in Manitoba, we have not had call to actually put that into effect. We now do.

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The Manitoba central railroad has already been created in the province running lines to Pine Falls, I know, in my country, and one I believe to Carman. We have also seen an announcement in short-lining a subdivision through Souris, Hartney districts. I also note the Prairie Dog Central has been established as another short line. So we will have a number of short-line operators.

As a consequence, we have put into effect under the short-line railroad act the necessary regulations to govern and inspect for the safety issues and other matters around those short lines. We of course are working very closely with our federal counterparts not to have to reinvent the wheel or establish inspection branches. We are able to contract with them to do a portion of that work and adopt their standards, which makes only good sense.

Mr. Chair, another area I guess that I would like to touch upon in my remarks is the whole development, of course, of the Mid-Continent Trade Corridor in trade. In 1997, Manitoba's overall exports to the United States increased by over 19 percent over the previous year to $5.35 billion. This was the third-strongest growth rate among the provinces and significantly higher than the national gain of only 9.6 percent. As we see the North American market develop, as we see the revolutions take place in agriculture with the loss of the Crow rate, where we see so much more of our grain now being fed into livestock and other products being produced, the Maple Leaf plant in Brandon, we are seeing a whole score of new products, the Isobord plant using an agricultural by-product to produce countertops. All of these advances are finding large markets across North America.

Developing, as I have indicated before, our trade network, our road system, our rail system, our air system to be able to appropriately move goods is critical to our productivity in the future as a province. We look forward to the continued growth in our economy, as we have seen, and it is our challenge in Transportation to ensure that we are working with the transportation industry to develop our trade corridors and routes. Certainly the mid-continent trade corridor is of great importance to me and to this government, and I look forward to working very closely with our partners towards the advancing of this project.

I look forward to the day when a good or product can travel from Churchill through Winnipeg to Mexico City or from Mexico City through Winnipeg to Churchill and anywhere else in the world from that port. We certainly have many exciting challenges ahead of us but many, many opportunities. We also work very closely in the Nunavut initiative, one of interest to the member in the North, as we welcome our new territorial partner in Canada's Confederation. As the only southern province with a land boundary with that new territory, we are hopeful that the development of their economy and resupply some day–it may not happen in the immediate future but some day we will see, as we develop our north-south links, a land link to that territory with, of course, Churchill being the jumping off point. That is very exciting, and we certainly want to be working with Nunavut on their transportation issues and needs and hope that Manitoba will some day be a beneficiary of that kind of development.

Mr. Chair, as the member knows, some of our initiatives for this year are off-road vehicle legislation which was introduced in the House, which I understand the member will be speaking to some time in the not too distant future, where we extend the drunk-driving, impaired-driving provisions to off-road vehicles. I think for both of us who have constituencies with many off-road vehicles, we appreciate the importance of the expansion of this legislation.

The reflective marking on commercial trailers, we are also working in this area. It is already a requirement for trailers travelling into the United States, again part of that harmonization and certainly improvement of safety. I know that there are consultations we are working on on bus safety, which is very important particularly for school buses.

In the area of climate change, we are certainly involved in the whole process sponsored by the federal government to see Canada fulfill its requirements under the Kyoto Accord. We are in fact chairing the national freight subtable of the transportation table and working to ensure that national solutions are consistent with our capabilities to fulfill them and ensuring that Manitoba companies are positioned to capture new economic opportunities resulting from changes arising from meeting Canada's environmental commitments.

We certainly believe that that process, if done reasonably, can advance and improve our climate and at the same time, if we are again innovative, not result in economic displacement.

One concern that I have in this area is the concept floated by the national government of increasing the fuel tax by some 10 cents a litre as a punitive measure against automobile consumption. I have expressed to federal representatives and to others in the transportation industry that that may not in fact be something that is acceptable to Canadians nor be effective. For members like my critic the member for Flin Flon (Mr. Jennissen), for people like me representing Lac du Bonnet where so many of our people have so few choices in transportation, this would truly be a punitive measure that would be very unlikely to have the desired effect. So these concerns have been expressed and will continue to be, and I would hope that the member for Flin Flon would join us in ensuring that other more innovative means are found of meeting our requirements.

I attended this morning, or at noon hour, a conference in the railway and environment sector, and this matter was certainly being discussed. I had the opportunity to make some comments on it, and what I found, again, very interesting was that for many there, the argument about certainly rail being more efficient and environmentally friendly, many truths to that, but they had to be reminded that the history of the railroad of service, of meeting customer need in days gone by–and the member for Flin Flon whose constituents have lived very closely with the old Canadian National Railroad knows that client service, competitiveness, meeting need, was not necessarily synonymous with the railway business in Canada. One of the messages I delivered very clearly there today, it was I thought very clearly, was that you should not be using punitive gas taxes to force people onto a system that is not being competitive or client friendly. I also recognize that there has been some many changes by the railways in the last few years to improve their service, improve their efficiency, become more cost competitive and, I think, really take the trucking industry back on in moving freight in cost-efficient and client-oriented manner.

On that particular note, I know the member for Inkster (Mr. Lamoureux) will likely be speaking in these Estimates at some point. The further developments of intermodal opportunities, particularly those that allow a choice between railroad services, are very critical, again, to ensuring competitiveness in the railroad and in the transportation industry. I know we will be speaking about the Patterson grain elevator project and the road service, that being one project that provides access to a delivery point for two railroads thereby ensuring that a competitive situation exists which ultimately, I would hope, provide some significant benefit to the producers who provide the grain going through that particular elevator. So these become very important issues ensuring that we have good intermodal development to continue to be a major player in transportation.

If we look at our province now, so much of the freight from western Canada flows through Winnipeg going south as a turning point from the West to the South. That is something we hope to see developed so that as many of those jobs and opportunities with that kind of transportation system grow in our province. It is not just jobs in the railways and those providing it. It is the jobs that are created because we are on a major international North American transportation network that make us a very competitive place to build a factory, build an industry, because it is very easy to get the goods to market. Although we have very, very competitive electrical rates and a very motivated and well-educated labour force and many other advantages here, they are for naught, in many cases, if our transportation economics are not there to move those goods to the huge market to the South. So this much work has to be done in this area.

I know I have spoken a fair bit of time here, but I wanted to give the member a flavour of how I am approaching this department and the issues as I see them as the new Minister of Highways and Transportation. Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the indulgence of the time of the members of the committee.

Mr. Chairperson: We thank the Minister of Highways and Transportation for those comments. Does the official opposition critic, the honourable member for Flin Flon, have an opening statement?

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Mr. Gerard Jennissen (Flin Flon): Yes, I do, Mr. Chair. First of all, I would like to take the opportunity to welcome the minister to his new portfolio, his relatively new portfolio, and also thank the outgoing minister, who I take it will be retiring from politics, because I know he was certainly a hard-working minister. At the same time I also once again would like to welcome the minister's staff because I know them to be dedicated and very hard-working people.

I was happy to hear from the minister that he realizes, and I was sure that he would, that we in Manitoba, the Keystone Province, are in a unique position geographically and otherwise to be a major player in transportation in Canada, and I am fairly happy he pointed that out one more time. I am also happy to note that there has been a slight increase in the overall funding for Highways and Transportation, not enormous admittedly, but at least a moderate increase and also no layoffs. I think that is rather important. The minister talked about contending forces that are out there and some of these appear to be contradictory forces, and we have to work out what I guess what they call in Latin a modus vivendi, a way to live, a middle way, because the wish list on the one hand and what we can do on the other hand with limited finances seems to sometimes put us in a rather contradictory position.

I am very happy to hear him say that toll roads will not form part of this government's thrust, because I know that is not popular in many parts of this country. I am fully aware as the minister pointed out that infrastructure does have low sex appeal. It is not something that voters get cranked on, but on the other hand, voters get very angry when the road is bumpy or not surfaced properly and so on. Like I say, the infrastructure in general may have low sex appeal, but it is very basic and very necessary.

Given that these Estimates do cover the period leading us into the new millennium, I think it would be normal to focus on the future, but of course we need to take stock of where we are positioned right now as well. Therefore I think it is appropriate to look at not only the year 2000 and beyond, but also to review the past 11 years under this administration and ask if things could have been done differently or better, and I am sure they could have been, but then the wisdom of hindsight is always 20-20.

I do know that there have been no sudden or dramatic changes in the Highways department from the 1980s, but if I may be biased somewhat in the North there is the general perception, and I certainly share it, that there seems to be a shift in focus from the 1980s and that the shift in focus is in the sense that we are not expanding our roads and airports like we used to, the network, and you could argue, well, we have saturated the province. That is not true. Like, expansion of the system is simply not even on the table at this point, and I know there are financial reasons for it, but it is still something that somewhere in long-range planning has to occur and we have to talk about.

That leads me to the next portion when I talk about expansion. That is airports and northern airports because we are dealing with airports that, I think, were built in most cases at least, I am guessing, 20-some years ago, and they have not kept pace with technology or the new aircraft. So in a sense we are saying we are using almost early 20th Century airports for 21st Century planes. I think a lot of work needs to be done, and I know it will cost a lot of money.

Highways and Transportation is a very bread and butter department. Most Manitobans deal with it mainly as the result of the action or inaction sometimes of this department nearly every single day of their lives. You cannot escape it because you are driving down roads or highways and you cannot escape making comments on the quality of Manitoba roads and sometimes comparing those roads and highways with those of other jurisdictions, be it those of Alberta or Saskatchewan or the United States or even Europe. I think it is appropriate that we do some of those comparisons here as well, in this Chamber, which in many ways is the most public of reviews of the department. In this particular place it is the most public of reviews. Talk about comparing and contrasting our roads, rail or air systems with those of other jurisdictions, I guess one thing we do run into, people say, well, you are comparing apples and oranges, this is not Europe, this is not the United States. It is quite true. I do understand that there are different population densities, political systems, taxation systems, geographic size, and so on. I also realize when I visit Europe particularly, a nation like the Netherlands, which has a much richer, much more condensed transportation system, we can be envious of those systems. But you know, we do not have, what is it, 16 million people cramped in a geographic size about one-thirteenth the size of Manitoba. So their efficiencies are partially due to the fact they are extremely small nations.

Regardless of that, the rhetoric is still very often about the marketplace, and there is only one global marketplace in which we must compete. The networking that we must do with other jurisdictions at the same time that we are competing with them, and I notice particularly, the minister has made reference of that, the great increase in north-south flow of goods and commodities. I am very happy to note the minister putting emphasis on the fact that when we are looking at larger structures such as trade corridors, he referenced I believe the Mid-continent Trade Corridor, or as we referred to it in the past, the Central North American Trade Corridor. I am happy to point out I have attended a number of meetings dealing with people who are trying to push that corridor. Then, if we are talking about that corridor, we should be pointing out that the logical, not even the terminus, but the logical place it more or less ends would be Churchill, but then Churchill does not really end because there is Nunavut and Keewatin and resupplying those areas. So we are indeed talking about a north-south flow of goods from the Nunavut through Churchill all the way to Mexico City and beyond.

I think we have to look at those larger pictures, those greater implications, even as we are dealing with very finite dollars and talking about grading Highway 391, very specific things, but, at the same time, we cannot forget the overall and much larger pictures. Certainly as I look around, I see some major trends. The minister has discussed them to some degree, major trends that were particularly noticeable in the last decade or so, the north-south flow of goods and commodities, as I have said before, the greater emphasis on air travel, especially in northern and remote communities. A number of decades ago, air travel was virtually nonexistent in northern Manitoba. Then a few decades ago, we did put in airports, but I think they were put in, perhaps if I can use the word, to a pioneering standard. I think they were basically there, or largely there, for medivac reasons, and to some degree resupply reasons. Most of the heavy supplies, I think, would go by winter road, but that has changed. That nature of airport usage has changed. People now use those airports for many, many other reasons, and the traffic is increasing. The airplanes are getting better, volume increasing, and yet the airports have stayed largely the same. That situation obviously will lead to problems; in fact, we have had problems including some tragic ones.

As well, I believe, there has been a trend, and the minister has made reference of that, to great rail and truck rationalization processes that are at work here. We have lost, I think, for some trucking companies, our status as being the headquarters here in Winnipeg. I notice Reimer is no longer headquartered here. Nonetheless, we are still a very significant player in the market.

As well and the minister has pointed this out, the Estey report attempts to address the grain transportation system needs and a more positive change in direction for producers. I do not believe the minister is accurate in suggesting that we are totally opposed to Estey. I think it is too early to say we are opposed to Estey, opposed to parts of Estey or at least looking at it critically, because we are worried that the producers may get hurt and perhaps unjustifiably because of the historical record. A suspicion of the large railroads that to some of those efficiencies, some of those rationalizations, those money savings will not be passed on to the producer. So we are, I think, justifiably somewhat gun-shy of saying, holus-bolus, it is a great report, we support it 100 percent.

It is correct to say that we do know there are some very strong positives in the Estey report, and we will look at it carefully. But we would hate to say that we support it 100 percent at this stage without further studying it very carefully.

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As well, obviously, the nature of northern railroads has changed. The minister pointed out OmniTRAX's purchase of the CN's Bay Line and the Sherridon line I think has been very positive for northern Manitoba. I am extremely pleased to see the Hudson Bay railroad investing effort and energy and putting forth innovative solutions to make short-line railroading work in northern Manitoba. I just happen to notice an awful lot of work being done on the line. I walk that line on occasion. I notice there are new ties being put in. There is a lot more gravel. The engines are being spruced up in different colours so when they go by the track they fit the northern landscape and so on and so on. There is a feeling of new impetus and a new push north and south.

I am very happy to note that we are looking at using not only the Sherridon line but specifically the Hudson Bay line for products we have not talked about much before. Certainly, I was very happy to see some backhaul from Spain coming last summer, copper ore all the way from Spain being backhauled through Churchill to Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting in Flin Flon. Those are the kinds of things that we need to make that railroad successful so that they are not hauling just grain one way and nothing back the other way. I think there is a tremendous potential there, apart from tourist potential, and the tourist potential is enormous. But again in the past we had trouble with CN, and we continue to have trouble with Via Rail in meeting our needs. Whether they are passenger cars–I could talk for half a day about the problems, for example, the people in Pukatawagan have with Via Rail, about the lack of cars or the cars are way too old. There are not enough cars. People have to travel in baggage cars and so on. So there are all kinds of horror stories as well.

But the potential is there for those northern lines, and I hope they will always be there, those northern lines. That was somewhat in doubt in the middle of 1996 when, on July 1, the Canadian government basically walked away from those lines and said, well, we are willing to sell them for scrap. I remember, and I am sure the minister can recall, Paul Tellier's attitude about those northern lines when we met with him here in Winnipeg. I felt that Mr. Tellier was much more concerned, and perhaps he should be, with his shareholders in New York than he was with a Canadian vision, that is, that whole region being at risk. His argument was, well, we want to make a buck and, more or less, we do not care how we make that buck as long as we make it. You guys in northern Manitoba can shift for yourselves. That was the impression I got. I was not very happy with it. It certainly was quite a philosophical difference from Sir John A. Macdonald and trying to tie this nation together with steel threads.

The vision of the federal government being involved in transportation seems to have taken a very low standing, and I guess we could argue whether it is a progressive or retrograde step but certainly opting out of railroads, ports, airports and so on, Nav Canada, it is a concern we have. What role should a federal government play in keeping transportation links across this country, in north, south, in good shape? What input should they have, and how much effort and energy should they devote to it? They are basically saying let us leave it to the marketplace, and there are some reasons for that. That will tend to put large regions of this country at risk unless we as a provincial government, in the case of northern Manitoba, can find ways around that and make sure the potential of northern Manitoba is realized.

The minister mentioned Nunavut. We are hoping that when we talk about Nunavut, not just the resupply of Nunavut and the former Keewatin district, that we also keep in mind that when we are talking roads, perhaps in the near future, into Nunavut, we are studying that, and I would like to ask the minister some questions on that, as well as power lines, that we have an open mind on it because there are some competing regions of the province. I am thinking obviously the Churchill direction up to Nunavut, but there is also the other direction championed by places like Leaf Rapids, Lynn Lake, Brochet, Lac Brochet, Tadoule Lake and so on. Their argument is that a road link, for example, to Nunavut would go much better over the higher ground of that territory. In fact, the Town of Lynn Lake has strongly endorsed that this government push that direction. Of course, we notice there is also the competing direction which would go through Churchill. I cannot come down one way or the other, which would be better. I think that has to be studied, and I think it is still in the study phase, but I just want to alert the minister that there is more than one route possible. Certainly Lynn Lake would really prefer to see that other route, and their argument also makes a lot of sense.

Having said that, there are a number of issues that have to be worked out with the Dene people regardless which route future roads or power lines might take.

To change tenor somewhat, Mr. Minister, for most Manitobans highways and transportation basically means roads. That is the case in most of Manitoba, but perhaps not so in the northern part of Manitoba, part of which I have the privilege to represent. But in general, people want decent, safe, reliable, all-weather roads. That is the case everywhere, but as I point out mainly in northern Manitoba where they do not have those roads in some cases.

As someone who has lived and worked in northern Manitoba for 30 years, I have a very keen interest in seeing that our roads are properly maintained and safe. To give you an example, I recently had the opportunity of visiting the community of Sherridon-Cold Lake, and I use that just as an example of visiting one of the many communities out there. The road to Sherridon-Cold Lake is roughly 80 kilometres from Highway No. 10. It was a pioneering road, a logging road, a Repap-Tolko road, but is now being used by the community of Sherridon-Cold Lake when the road was extended.

When I travelled that road the other week, it was very wet and slippery, and I was certainly glad that I had a four-wheel drive with me. Despite that, I almost slipped off the road several times. It was a very rough road. It was not graded very well. It is hazardous. People from Sherridon tell me they have counted. Now I have no reason to doubt this, but I have some reason to wonder why anybody would go to the trouble–but they have counted 234 relatively sharp bends on that road. Not all of them are sharp bends, but some of them are blind curves and are very, very dangerous.

The road is unbrushed largely. It is narrow, it is winding, as I have said before, and there have been numerous accidents on it. Now we can argue that with limited finances we can only upkeep existing road systems, and I am sure some people are aggravated by the fact we have tried to increase the road network by including places like Sherridon. I think eventually we have to do that to all our communities, not just Sherridon but those communities without all-weather road access. But to take the Sherridon road, there have been numerous accidents. There is Cyril Perry, former mayor of the community, badly hurt in an accident. Ed Head and his family; Ed Head was the former president of the MMF, badly hurt, crippled, paralyzed in an accident. Other people were hurt. One of his relatives, a woman, lost her baby. Art Reimer, Christmas of '97, lost his life on this road.

Now this is a road that is not hugely travelled. Yes, it is there for tourism. It is there for hauling logs, but when you consider the number of people on the road, there have been a tremendous number of injuries and fatalities, deaths. So that is an example of one road that we have to deal with.

We know that fixing that road, and that is just one road, would help Sherridon-Cold Lake with their tourist potential because this is a tourist area. This is an area that has had some hard times. It was a mining community from '31 to '51, '52. The town was moved north on sleds to Lynn Lake, most of the town, two churches, I believe, and about 100 houses lifted off the foundations and sledded north by Lynn tractors, hence the name Lynn Lake. But this town has never died. This town has refused to die, and people are hard at work trying to make it work. I am happy to say that the Minister of Northern Affairs (Mr. Newman) is trying to put a fair bit of effort, energy and money into helping that community, but it is just one of many communities.

All I would like to say is that that road is essential to that community. It is a lifeline. This perhaps is a point that we have to make, not just as a critic of Highways but to southerners in general, that in the North very often we do not have a lot of options when it comes to roads. If, in a Manitoba community, in most Manitoba communities in the south, you are ill, for example, and have to go to a larger community and one road should happen to be washed out, let us say, you could still travel four or five other ways out of that town, but you cannot do that when you live in Sherridon. There is only one way out and one way in, the same way with Leaf Rapids and Lynn Lake and Snow Lake and many, many other communities. We have to, I think, consider that because we do not have those same options. To us it is not just a road, it is also a lifeline in many cases.

I would like to also talk about another road, Mr. Minister, and that is the road to Pukatawagan, which does not, as yet, exist. It is definitely needed. We have talked about this before. Pukatawagan is a community of 2,000 people. It is serviced by rail sporadically, does have an airport, which I hope is in the process of being lengthened, but it is very expensive to fly in and out. Just to give the minister an example, a number of years ago I talked with the nurses in Pukatawagan, and they said that in that one year 300-and-some medivac planes entered Pukatawagan. If you take a look at the cost of the medivac, I think it would be much simpler to make that road connection from the Tolko-Repap roads and connect Pukatawagan. So that is a pitch I am making for that road.

Of course, I could talk about 391, Lynn Lake and Leaf Rapids. That road has always been a difficult one. I could, as well, talk about northern roads. Prior to the '95 election there was a promise that contingent on Repap expansion there would be $90 million dedicated to fixing northern roads. That of course never materialized after the election.

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So I would like to have the minister consider the fact that it is not just a question of maintaining what we have, but I think we should also be expanding. Lord knows, it is not going to be easy with the monies available.

The minister talked about airports, the northern airports. We all remember the 1997 crash at Little Grand Rapids, a tragic crash. All of us are aware that much more work needs to be done on northern airports. We have had problems with medivac planes. Not so long ago there was a medivac plane problem in South Indian Lake. I am given to understand it was just a technical problem. But I do know that when I was in Lac Brochet not too long ago, the airstrip had a whole number of problems.

Due to wet and soft conditions of the airstrip, Calm Air was forced to temporarily suspend service to the community. One small plane was stuck for three days on the Lac Brochet airstrip apron, which is partially muskeg. Apparently that airport is to be lengthened, but I am not sure how that is going to happen, because one end is right at the lake abruptly, and the other end is, as far as I know, deep muskeg. I know that Chief John Dantouze and his council are working hard to lobby for improvement of that airstrip, and that is just one airstrip. There are a lot of others that the minister knows need to be upgraded.

We feel that northern Manitobans have to be given better service. They do not want to be treated like second-class citizens. It is not just a matter of medivac access like only emergencies. I think we have to have a broader vision and a larger vision about making it possible that all citizens of the province have either road access or reliable air access to the larger centres of this province. That means, I guess, creating more roads. I do not know where the funding will come from, but we cannot ignore it. We need a larger plan, a larger vision. It is not good enough to say, well, let us look at it next year. I think at some point we are going to have to say this is phase 1, this is phase 2, this is phase 3. Hopefully the feds will get involved. They would have to get involved, at any rate, as the minister pointed out.

I note that my time is somewhat limited, so in conclusion I would like to say I would like to get started with the Estimates process. I would like, first of all, if the minister would agree, and I think he intimated as much last Thursday, go with some general questions, more philosophical questions, perhaps, in which there may be genuinely differing points of view. Certainly I have some concerns. I note full well that the minister and the previous minister have said that we need $1.5 billion to upgrade our road system, yet we only have $100 million to $110 million for capital projects every year. That is obviously a dilemma. The minister has referenced the fact that the trend is to larger trucks and more traffic and that a lot of the rail lines are being abandoned or at least there is a process of rail line abandonment which is not really the direction we want to go, I would guess, if we want to save money on road maintenance, and certainly not the way to go if we are talking about the Kyoto Protocol and the lessening of greenhouse emissions.

The minister has suggested much more involvement by this province and the federal government especially on a national highway system and national highway strategy, that the feds have to put a lot more money into roads, and there is no doubt about that. I think it has been shameful that they have been allowed to walk away from what I think is their historical responsibilities. I do not know of any other industrialized nation, certainly not in Europe or even south of the border where they are putting in $200 billion over the next few years, where a central government has abdicated its responsibilities for transportation, not just roads but also its lack of concern for airports and trying to dump those on various communities and cities, sometimes with success, sometimes without success. Yes, we need, I think, some strategies. We have to work together with the federal government, and I guess basically get them to the table and agree that they have to change their ways. Certainly that is not a surprise. We could spend a lot of time together fedbashing, but I think we need some practical direct one-step-after-the-next approach to getting the feds to listen.

Lastly, before I stop, Mr. Minister, in light of the Provincial Auditor's report in the spring of 1998 in his Value-for-Money audit, I hope the minister and his staff will give me an update as to the degree of implementation of the key recommendations. Those recommendations in a nutshell on page 50 of the report are, and this might be a good place to start off for the minister, and I will just repeat them. I am shortening the actual recommendations. Three of them, the first one was adopting a lease lifetime cost methodology in determining rehabilitation and maintenance strategies, priorities, and budgets; secondly, documenting relative emphasis of various planning inputs which underlie rationale for construction rehabilitation project priorities. I am particularly interested in the relative weight of socioeconomic factors in project prioritizations. In other words, what constitutes needs? Is it the number of cars travelling on a highway, or is it an isolated region where improved transportation is a life-and-death issue? Is it a safety factor versus an absolute need factor? And the post-implementation reviews to check out to see if anticipated benefits were actually realized, in other words, you said you were going to do that, well, did it actually happen?

Now maybe those are three very difficult places to start, I do not know if the minister feels they are or not, but if they are not, this might be a good place for us to start in general. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chairperson: We thank the critic of the official opposition for those remarks. Under the Manitoba practice, debate of the Minister's Salary is traditionally the last item considered for the Estimates of a department. Accordingly, we shall defer consideration of this item and now proceed with consideration of the next line. Before we do that, we invite the minister's staff to join us at the table, and we ask the minister to introduce his staff present.

Mr. Praznik: Mr. Chair, if I could introduce my staff. First of all, Mr. John Hosang, who is the assistant deputy minister for Engineering and Technical Services, and the assistant deputy minister of Transportation Safety and Regulatory Services; Mr. Don Norquay, who is the assistant deputy minister for Policy, Planning and Development; Ms. Marlene Zyluk, who is the registrar of motor vehicles and assistant deputy minister for Driver and Vehicle Licencing; Mr. Paul Rochon, who is the assistant deputy minister for Administration; and of course, Mr. Barry Tinkler, known to most MLAs, particularly rural MLAs, the assistant deputy minister in charge of Construction and Maintenance, the big spender in my department.

Mr. Chairperson: We thank the minister. Before we proceed any further, is it the will of the committee to centre in or to ask general questions and pass the lines at the end of the questions? Agreed? [agreed]

We will now proceed to 15.1. Administration and Finance (b) Executive Support (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits on page 91 of the Estimates book. Shall the item pass?

Mr. Jennissen: Mr. Chair, I am hoping this is agreeable to the minister, to deal with the general overviews first. Maybe, with some of the more philosophical debates, get them underway, and tomorrow, hopefully, more specific. I know some of my colleagues have asked if they could be given some time to ask questions on specific roads or specific projects and so on, but today, I think, fairly general questions, overall questions. We may get to it line by line, I am not sure; if we do, we do. Is that agreeable in general to the minister?

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Mr. Praznik: Mr. Chair, I am just wondering how much time the official opposition has allotted. I appreciate as well that the members of the Liberal caucus may have questions, particularly in one area, but I have no problem with freewheeling debate and that other members may want to come in with specific questions. I would just like to have some knowledge of what questions and when so that we can be sure we have the right staff here.

Mr. Jennissen: In terms of general framework of time, it was 10 hours, and I am guessing that today and tomorrow it would be the bulk of the material. Possibly Wednesday might be needed as well. I cannot say for sure for the simple reason that, when some of my colleagues wax eloquent about rural roads, they tend to go on for a long time. If I knew that they were not going to do that, I could give you a much crisper answer.

Mr. Praznik: Mr. Chair, that is fair.

Mr. Jennissen: Is it acceptable to the minister to deal with the Auditor's report from last year and the three key recommendations and give us an update so that I get a feeling of, yes, we have met those recommendations or are in the process of meeting those?

Mr. Praznik: Yes, first of all, my department advises me that a couple of the things they have done are that the Trans-Cad computer software program has been acquired, which will improve transportation analysis, modelling and highway feature mapping capabilities; and that our asset management system has been acquired to identify highway maintenance and rehabilitation needs and the appropriate timing of remedial action to provide for the least lifetime costing. Those are a couple of things that have been done. As well, the department has engaged Lovett Consultants at a cost of about $25,000 to develop a transparent and defensible framework for the analysis and weighing of all planning information inputs, highway needs assessment, benefit cost analysis, and socioeconomic factors to improve in our construction planning. I want to just comment on that for a moment when I am finished with this.

With respect to long-term planning a process is also being looked at to develop a long-term highway infrastructure strategy involving extensive stakeholder public consultation, and looking at working with local governments in that particular process, it is my intention to see that get underway this fall. Right now we are doing many of the preliminary documents that will form the basis of that.

I do want to make just some general comments about this. When you have an infrastructure system and it requires, for argument's sake, some $200 million a year to maintain and enhance and you are spending $110 million on it, I do not care what system you have in place for prioritization, you are going to be under siege all the time. So, until we are able to address that fundamental issue of sustainable sufficient funding for a highway system, we are going to continue to see our system erode on an annual basis.

The member has made a very I think insightful comment. He has been critic here for a number of years and he has watched the debates in the House. Highway and highway infrastructure are not sexy to the general public. They are certainly not sexy to the Free Press and the Winnipeg Sun and the CBC and most media outlets, and they are long-term issues. The deterioration of roads is something that rarely happens overnight. Yes, we will have something fall apart, and there will be a big story about it. But generally speaking, it is something that goes on day in and day out, little bit by little bit by little bit, and it does not garner the kind of public attention. It does not make its way into the public debates. It does not make its way into the kind of demands on governance that the member for Flin Flon (Mr. Jennissen) and his colleagues and myself and my colleagues have to deal with every day in balancing the needs and the wants of the community.

I am not to say that we as politicians just react totally to media all the time, but certainly the public's agenda, and where we believe investments have to be made for the long-term wealth of the province, we have to be able to convince the public in a meaningful way. It also involves choices and it also involves, I believe, the national government, as I have discussed in my remarks.

From my perspective, the No. 1 challenge for me in my tenure in this department is to get us into a position with advancing a dedicated highway gas tax in essence being dedicated to Highways and Transportation and a federal involvement in this so that we have the discipline of dedicated taxation.

My view is that is what is at the end of the day needed for the long-term health of our highway system. I did not say this work is not important, but as long as we continue to not have access to the whole pot of gasoline tax money, as long as we continue to see hundreds of other issues capture the public's imagination, it will be difficult for whatever politician to be able to make the argument to the public about the need for the kind of sustainable support for maintaining our entire system.

The member specifically referenced socioeconomic factors. Those are very good questions. I am looking forward to seeing the work done of our consultant. I certainly, as minister, will not implement it just because it was done by a consultant. It has to make common sense to me, and I have to feel comfortable defending it. Ultimately many of these things will boil down to subjective decision making. You know one of the difficulties I have with this process is that one can apply many different systems of analysis, but many of these decisions, particularly when one considers the socioeconomic factors, there is a great deal of subjectivity to them. The member and I know that.

Even if one puts a weighting system to it, somebody still has to subjectively apply that weighting. How do you weigh these things out? It becomes a subjective test. Ultimately I am a great believer in the British parliamentary system. We as elected members are elected to this place by our constituents and will be held accountable to our constituents for the decisions that we make, good and bad.

Of course we have a responsibility to ensure we get the best value we can for money, et cetera, but, ultimately, I view these kind of tools not as the be-all. No computer program should produce our highways construction list for the year. What they do, what it should do is provide us with some standardized measures so we can assess status of road condition, need for maintenance and repair, and provide us tools so that we can make better choices or at least choices that we are able to justify, I think, with some standardized tools of measurement. But ultimately they are tools for decision making.

The reason I say that to the member, and I would hope the member would concur with what I am saying here, because we all know–I had been Northern Affairs minister for several years and he is a northern MLA– that there are a number of communities, both in the North and in the south, where there is an importance to that road, if one looked at that community and you looked at the economic benefits, compared to many other places in the province that may never have a road, let alone be justified on maintenance work. Ultimately, you have to make some decisions on the basis of judgment.

For example, just to put it in perspective, take the community of Snow Lake. I was there when the mine announced–I do not know if the member was the member for that community at that time or if it had been Mr. Storie. When the last mine closed and everyone said that Snow Lake is dead, well, any kind of computer analysis or objective analysis–when they tell you that is a community that has lost its raison d'être, that is not a place you want to spend any more money. Yet the member and I know that the best place to look for a new mine is within the site, from the top of the head frame of the old one.

You cannot put that into an objective analysis in a computer model, but the need to keep an investment in infrastructure, to keep the exploration going and something going there in terms of the infrastructure, it is a gamble but a calculated one. There will always be that requirement for that kind of judgment to be made by ultimately the people who are elected on behalf of their constituencies, so these are tools that are important ones. We are taking this very seriously, but I just want to put it in perspective that it is important to still recognize that there is a role for the judgment of those people who are elected by the voters to respond to their needs and to weigh and balance. We all have to do that in our own constituencies from time to time. Sometimes it is easy; sometimes it is not.

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I just know that the piece of this puzzle that I look forward to is the consultation that I intend to be involved with personally as we do it across the province in the fall, in developing some longer range planning with municipalities, chambers of commerce, communities, in looking at how we rationally approach our road system.

To give the member a little bit of, again, flavour of where I am coming from, in many of our agriculture areas, just as an example, the growth of the potato industry has resulted in a need for storage capacity. How that storage capacity is developed can have a big difference on our road system. Developing it in a co-operative fashion in towns with RTAC ratings so that the finished product and the heaviest loads can be moved out is far more efficient from a road perspective and an industrial development perspective than seeing sometimes storage built on every farm over a wider road network where necessarily your trucks that are hauling are going to be heavier weights on roads that are not built for them. Communities have to kind of engage in that balance of structuring their own municipal road system with ours to maximize the usage of heavy weight roads as opposed to seeing them develop everywhere.

We have in my area agricultural development that took place on farm sites that have grown and done tremendously well, and I cannot fault the people who have done this. They have done a perfect job, a wonderful job, growing their businesses, but they have put a huge road traffic onto municipal roads leading to their farm, and we have to get some balance in that. That might be in municipalities making agricultural business land close to town on an RTAC system available at a very reasonable cost to people needing and wanting to develop those businesses. Those are the kinds of discussions that we have in planning our road system, ultimately where these tools that the auditors recommended are going to be needed. But, ultimately, those of us who have to be answerable to the public–no computer program I have ever seen is yet answerable to the public–that is the role we have to play. These are tools for us, and I will be more than pleased to keep the member appraised of this process as it continues and to share with him my thinking and the kinds of tools that are being developed.

Mr. Chairperson: Before we proceed any further, I would just like to point out for all members of the committee that, with these mikes that we have in front of us now, it is no longer necessary to have them up right in front of you. You can have your papers–

An Honourable Member: Oh, I am sorry.

Mr. Chairperson: No, no, it was not to point it out any particular member. I am just saying you do not have to. You can have your papers in front of you and just speak quite normally. These are the mikes from the Assembly, so they have lots of power. Our Hansard operator will adjust them accordingly.

The honourable member for Flin Flon, to proceed with his question.

Mr. Jennissen: Thank you, Mr. Chair, for pointing that out because normally I get a lecture about not being close enough to the mike, so I have been hugging this thing. I will not do that again. I thank the minister for his answer.

Yes, the decisions made, I presume, are very often subjective. Where I am coming from is there is a difference, though, between making decisions for economic growth in the south and decisions that would bring isolated pockets of people like Pukatawagan into the main stream of the province. I do not know if that weighs largely in the scale of whoever does the weighing because Pukatawagan is not a powerhouse economically, although the people are trying their darndest to develop forestry and wild rice and other products. From another point of view, though it is not coming from the same pot, we are spending a lot of money flying people out, sick people even who could take regular road transportation. If you follow that and say there were 300 people in 1996 who were medivacked out of Puk, the average cost, I am guessing, is between $5,000 and $10,000. Now that is an enormous amount of money. If you put those dollars into even attempting to start a road system from wherever the Tolko-Repap road leaves off, it is not an impossible task. Where we are at right now it is never, never, never. Yet at some point the larger communities, I think, have to be connected. I understand a place like Granville Lake, very small, probably never will be, but a place with 2,000 people, I do not think we can ignore it forever.

Mr. Praznik: The member has hit upon one of the issues that I think is the greatest challenge for government. It is the old bureaucratic answer why we cannot do something because it is not in my department. Yet it is within the purview of government, of our government, and I say that collectively as Canadians. The money for the medivacs, quite simply, does not come out of the Department of Highways. So for us to find within our budget money to build this road, there are no savings to the Department of Highways building it. Consequently, in any rating system that an auditor would impose upon us, some computer program in which you would throw in these numbers, that particular road would show up as probably a very, very low priority. The member and I, our hair would be even grayer than it is today before anyone would even consider it.

Within government, obviously to the taxpayer there is the potential collective savings. One of the things we have to struggle with, and again even within government, even though I was a Health minister, I cannot remember particularly who would be funding how much and what percentage of the northern transportation, how those things work. They are First Nations people. Federal government had a budget for that which they abruptly ended and left a couple of million on the provincial taxpayer last year; I recall that issue. So you even have two governments who are paying for medivac service; ultimately, somebody has to take the bull by the horns and pull all the players together and be able to do a review.

Perhaps there is a role for the member for Flin Flon (Mr. Jennissen) to do. I would certainly, in working with him, be prepared to have our department, if he were to convene a meeting of the players together, I would certainly want my department to be part of it, because maybe within that mix is the ability to do something that over time saves the taxpayer some money, or at least breaks even, and provides a better road access to the community.

The case in point when the member was speaking, what jumped out at me, was the whole north central hydro line development. There was no reason for Hydro to build a hydro line in there, because what they would have to charge for the power made it impossible to sell electricity. The federal government, who spent a fortune paying for the diesel generation, was spending a fortune. We were supplying Northern Affairs communities. What worked there was everybody got together and said, hey, if we applied what we are spending now to building a line over a period of time will pay for the line and we will have a big savings. It took a huge amount of effort to bring two governments together, federal and provincial, and make that happen. It sounds to me that is what needs to happen in this particular case. I thank the member for bringing it to our attention. I will tell you, as the local MLA, if he is prepared to initiate some discussions between the parties to kind of get the ball rolling as the local member, I would be very pleased to ensure our department is there at that and would join him in requesting the Department of Health to be there as well.

Mr. Jennissen: I thank the minister for that. Only a day or two ago I talked with Hanson Dumas and Chief Shirley Castel from Pukatawagan and their concerns of course having been allayed, they still would like to see some action. By that we do not mean the impossible dream overnight. We mean at least some recognition that a road could be built, how do we go about it, what would be step one. As the minister pointed out, we have to take a large view of this. It may not be a direct saving to the Department of Highways, but it would be a saving for taxpayers. I am thinking in particular in terms of Health. Regular road connections, trucks coming in there with supplies and food more regularly, cheaper food, better health, they are facing all kinds of problems, some of the smaller communities and reserves. I think a lot of that could be alleviated if there was a direct weather road access. There could be all kinds of economic spin-offs and benefits that are not easily visible and certainly would not show up in any one department. That is why I think we have to look at the larger picture.

While we are on that, I would also like to move that same kind of thinking to that whole region of Leaf Rapids, Lynn Lake and points further North. I think there could be a temptation and I do not know if there is in the minister's mind or not, I hope not, but there could be a temptation saying since Ruttan mine in Leaf Rapids will cease functioning in the year 2003, since we have not found any new ore deposits in the immediate region, and since Lynn Lake and the gold mine at Lynn Lake is nearing the end of its life, as well, that entire region is at risk. It would be easy then to rationalize why put more money into 391. I think that would be the wrong direction to go, because we have to develop tourist potential in that region. We have to look for diversification. We have to look for other economic alternatives. I do believe in my heart of hearts that in the future, that is going to be an extremely important region, more important than it is right now. I would like to hear the minister's point of view on the continued need for money upgrading 391 and the regional Leaf Rapids, Lynn Lake and surrounding regions including Granville Lake, Brochet, South Indian and so on.

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Mr. Praznik: As the former minister of Energy and Mines, who was very much a part of putting our mine strategy together, I took over that portfolio from the previous member for Pembina, Mr. Don Orchard. I am a great believer that there is still a lot to be discovered in that part of the country. We know that the flyover work that was done with some of the new scanning devices to pick up magnetic anomalies in that part of the country, there were literally thousands to be explored. Although there is a low going on now in terms of the immediate future, I remember the same thing at Snow Lake. Oh, it was the end of Snow Lake when that mine closed, and yet a few years later, I was privileged to be there for the opening of Photo Lake. I was privileged to be there for the opening of the New Britannia. I must admit I lost track of Photo Lake, whether it is still open or not or completed. It was a small orebody, I know, but it just tells you that there are still a lot of things to be done in that country, and that road is an important part of that infrastructure. I would not have said that, but again, you know, the member has flagged for me the reason why all of this effort to kind of have a rational approach. We have come, in this computer age, to believing we can take everything and put it in with a set of criteria and it will pump out a list and there should be no human discretion. In that case, we do not have a Parliament, a Legislature or democracy at the end of the day.

The decision to continue to maintain that road in the face of no immediate ore discoveries is a gamble, but you have to take that gamble, I believe as a politician, because we have a broader experience than that computer. Ultimately at the end of the day, yes, we may be criticized because maybe someday no orebody will found in that area and some auditor will say this is a bad waste of money, you should have known. But if a large gold deposit or another copper deposit, whatever, is found in that area and you have 2,000 or 3,000 people working, someone will say, boy, you had good judgment.

By the way, one of the things that makes that area attractive for exploration is that you have road access. One of the reasons why a mine is more economical putting in there is because you have rail and road access. So those are the areas that become very important in continuing to find a new well. So if the member is looking for a commitment from this minister, I give it to him here today that failure to find an orebody in the immediate future is not something that necessarily would, as long as I am minister, be a reason to continue to do no work on that road. If five, six, seven, eight, 10 years passed and nothing was found and the traffic volumes were down, it is a different story.

Obviously, I think the member knows and I share with him the belief that there is another mine to be found in that area and keeping the infrastructure going to encourage the exploration and ultimately make feasible the development of new mining opportunities in that area. As well, we have seen more development of timber opportunities as well, the growth in our woods industry, fibre industry growing. So, yes, you have to keep that open if you want people to pursue it, and those are very important.

I mean it will not be perfect. It will not be as much as certainly we would both like to be spending on that road, but certainly it will not be abandoned just because of the current circumstances. You know it makes the point, it reminds us always of why we are elected and not governed by computers because ultimately we have to be responsible to our electors and be able to defend with our rationale. Sometimes we will be wrong and we will pay the price for that, or we will have the understanding of the public for that, but ultimately it is the decisions of elected members, like the member for Flin Flon (Mr. Jennissen) and I having this discussion today in this public forum, that still ultimately have to accept responsibility for the decisions that are made around roadwork in our province.

Mr. Jennissen: I could add that with regard to Lynn Lake, apparently the federal government is putting some money in, I guess, possibly allowing the town to take over fully the airport because it is extremely difficult for a small town like that to carry a large airport.

As the minister was saying, we have to look at where there is potential, and I think there is much more mining potentially in that region. I am happy to hear him say it and put on the record that we are not going to desert 391. In fact, we should be putting more money into it because it does have enormous tourist attraction potential. We have talked about a round road all the way through to Fox Lake and Pukatawagan. That is not likely to happen in the near future, but again, who knows 20 years from now that might be something feasible.

I would like to point out that a place like Lynn Lake is also a place where NASA does a lot of high-altitude testing with balloons, so there is a influx of American money and so on. There are all kinds of little things happening that are important. Of course, we cannot really replace mining, and we are trying very hard to make tourism a kind of backup economic system, but it is going to be a long, long time before that would come anywhere near the potential that mines have.

I am happy to hear the minister say that that region is still going to have the support of this government, because very often when we make political decisions, sometimes they are made in a crass way, and I am pointing to the fact that we get angry when federally the votes are cast, the decision is made, and actually by the time we get to the Manitoba border, that the East ignores us, that the emphasis seems to be on Ontario and Quebec.

We in the North very often feel that government in the south, in particular the Highways department, you know, not their fault but through ministerial direction or through government impetus, are putting southern roads at a higher niveau, a higher level, than the North. Again, it is a voting thing. At least, that is how we perceive it in the North. Very often we hear sarcastic comments, people saying, well, they tell us we vote the wrong way; that is why they will not put the necessary funding into our roads.

I hope that is not the case. We feel that is sometimes the case. I hope the minister will, as he says, govern or help to govern or help to administrate in his department for all Manitobans. I think the North, being an area of great potential, we would certainly like to see the funding levels in Highways gradually increase to where they were in the '80s.

Mr. Praznik: Just one technical point, the member talked about in the '80s. The budget of the Department of Highways, I think, capital construction got as low as $80-some million during the Pawley administration, one of the lowest in Canada and, again, a government whose priorities were not necessarily in infrastructure.

I am not saying here we have been able to significantly increase that. We did increase it when we came to power, and we tried to maintain it through a very bad period in a recession, and now we are looking at ways to enhance that in the fuel tax. But I do not think there has been in Canada in 30-some years–and, you know, we could go through numbers about expenditure levels and the like and be able to talk about who spent what where, but the reality, I think, over the last 25, 30 years in Canada is that virtually every government has not maintained the levels of expenditure to keep up their roads and expand their road networks.

So we are arguing about whether one was worse than the other and all basically not putting enough in, not because I think governments were unwise or silly, but their publics, or their voting publics, demanded a whole bunch of other things of which roads were not politically sexy, and we are paying that price for it now.

There is no doubt that I would love to have four northern MLAs as part of the Progressive Conservative government caucus. I would welcome them wholeheartedly. We would be delighted to, and I make this offer to the member for Flin Flon. If he would like to cross the floor, I would be there to help him seek the Conservative nomination in Flin Flon because I like the member for Flin Flon. He would be a welcome addition to our caucus, and we would be delighted to have him. If he persists in standing for the New Democrats and his voters decide to return a Conservative, well, I would wish him well in a new career and welcome the new member for Flin Flon into the fold.

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The reality of past elections, we have not been successful, my party, in winning a seat. Perhaps in the next one we will, but having said that, the reality–and I remember being at a meeting in Thompson with the former Minister of Highways when I was the Northern Affairs minister, and we discussed roads and shares of funding, et cetera, and I think a commitment that my predecessor had made was to try to maintain a percentage of our expenditure being the equivalent of about 11 percent which was the percentage of road miles that the North had.

We appreciate that conditions may be harsher in some ways and other things, but there is always reasons for exception. One can say that some parts of the province have more economic activity than others, et cetera. There is also other air networks and things. We appreciate, you know, only one road, but that commitment was there. That was an improvement from 6 or 7 percent to 11, and I think we have managed to maintain that.

There are balances between maintenance and capital, and sometimes in a particular year it may be a little up or down, but I know that the combined expenditure on construction and maintenance in the Northern Region 5, in '96-97 was 12.3 percent; '97-98, 11.6; in '98-99, 12.6; and in '99-2000, it would be about 12.4 percent. So we have been running a little bit above that particular commitment. I guess the percentage of roads north of 53, in that region, is about 11.4 percent of our network.

Now, I do not want to make it sound like we have been hugely generous by about a percent more. We do appreciate that there are probably more maintenance costs, snow removal, and other things, so that kind of balances, but the former minister had indicated that that would be roughly what it would be, and so be it. That is what we are doing.

What it underlines to me, because I am sure when the member for Flin Flon (Mr. Jennissen) goes back to his constituency he will find very few people who will say all the work is adequate. I find very few in my own constituency or the member for La Verendrye (Mr. Sveinson) or the member for Portage la Prairie (Mr. Faurschou). They come to see me regularly with long lists of roads, as the member for Flin Flon does in Estimates. It really underlines the reality that we as a province, just like every other province in this Dominion of Canada, are not spending what we should be on maintaining our road system.

Quite frankly, the answer, as I have said before, is to see dedicated fuel taxes, to have the federal government play a role with the $147 million that they are collecting in our province on the roadways and putting none back, over a period of time phasing in that tax from part of a national program to maintain and do what we need. One nice thing about that dedicated fuel tax, particularly if dollars are expended on the percentage of roads, for the North that does not have 11 percent of our population, they drive a lot because you have a lot of roads to drive, a lot of miles to cover. You obviously would pay that percentage of the tax. You would see it come back in terms of percentage of roadwork, and it is a good way. Those who drive little because they do not have many roads to drive in urban areas pay less in fuel tax than those who drive more. So there is a way of ensuring that what they are spending now, what they are spending now anyway and seeing it go to Ottawa with little coming back, in this case none coming back, would do it.

At the end of the day, I know we have had some exchanges in Question Period that I have found very pleasant, the member for Flin Flon being very supportive of developing a national highway scheme. I think at the end of the day we need that to be able to maintain our road infrastructure north, south, east, west, centre of Manitoba instead of continuing to fight over a less than adequate pool of dollars to do the job.

Mr. Jennissen: I fully follow and understand the argument that the minister is making about the dedicated fuel tax, but I do not know what level of reality that is right now. He has probably talked to Collenette. I am not sure if he has. I do know that the federal minister has talked about putting $3.5 billion, to be matched I guess by the provinces, into a system. It has nothing to do with the fuel tax. I do not know whether that is enough, because we are talking about, what, a $17-billion deficit nationwide. So I guess $3.5 billion matched by provinces would be $7 billion, would be quite an enormous chunk.

I do not know if that is just posturing or if that is reality. Could the minister give me a feeling of that?

Mr. Praznik: I think the member has hit upon the real crux of this issue. The national highways program has been floated by Minister Collenette. I think he means well. It sounds to all of us in provincial governments as a one-time commitment to flow some money into the highway system. Well, we will take the money, first of all. We will be pleased to take the money and we will spend it, but does it solve the problem? Not at all, because our need is ongoing and will continue to be ongoing well into the future.

We are still left with a national government collecting this year $147 million of fuel taxes in our province and, other than this one-shot program, if they do it, putting none back. That is not adequate anywhere in this land. So we as Canadians I think have to have that debate. Why I am an advocate of dedicated fuel taxes for roads is the discipline that comes with that, because then we know those dollars are there for taxes, that you adjust your fuel tax based on what you need to maintain the road system.

For the motoring public there is a very clear linkage between knowing that the tax you are putting in that pump is going to maintain and build the roads you are driving on or your goods are coming on into your community as opposed to what we have now, the federal share going into an enormous pot of dollars in Ottawa and coming out in some other program and the roads being inadequate.

People say we pay a lot of fuel tax. That is why I am always concerned when the federal officials floated an idea in Ottawa recently about adding a few pennies a litre to pay for a national highways program. We said, you help us like thieves, you are already taking–how much a litre federal tax?–10 cents a litre in federal tax and you are putting none back in Manitoba or west of the Ottawa River. You are putting none back. You are suggesting we use toll roads; we are suggesting you add some more pennies to the litre. It is just offensive, offensive.

So, Mr. Chair, everywhere we travel now as a department, and we are talking about this issue, we advocate the dedicated tax. We certainly advocate it with our colleagues across the land, and we have told Mr. Collenette, I think, collectively that that is great to have another program but we have to also look at our long-term sustainability of it.

There was a time in government not so long ago where ministers of Finance would have absolutely balked at the idea of a dedicated fuel tax for highways. I am very pleased to say that within our own government, I think we have realized that is what we are doing now in practical fact. Maybe we should do that. Maybe we need to have a trust or whatever to do the dedicated tax thing, but it has to be that the public is ready for it. The dollars are there. We know that that means a shuffling of other money within the federal systems, some four or five billion and they will probably cost us somewhere else, but it is the discipline of knowing that your infrastructure issues are not going to be judged against the immediate issue of the day, whatever it is.

As northerners who are dependent on single, often gravel roads into their communities, there is no other group in this country who would have a greater logical reason to support dedicating fuel taxes to road construction because it is truly their lifeline. I appreciate the support the member has given me in the House. We have conveyed that to Minister Collenette, but everywhere I go now, I am using every speech I give as an opportunity to raise this issue. I think the federal government has to hear it. Canadians have to be engaged in this kind of debate over their infrastructure funding. Is it going to be easy? Not on your life is it going to be easy. This is a tough, hard-slugging match. But, you know, I have seen it happen before where an idea can catch fire and political winds being what they are, very shifty winds, can blow that fire into a raging storm that no federal government can avoid. That is what my job and view is and I ask the member to join with me, as I am sure he will, and his colleagues and my colleagues, because I see an opportunity to do this right.

My view is the national government is looking for a quick fix to say we have done it. We put some money in transportation. Then Mr. Iftody, the M.P. for Provencher, and some of the other members from Manitoba can travel around the countryside and say the federal government solved all your problems again. Just like we did in health with a one-time payment; just like in education with a one-time education budget. The member for Flin Flon, I think, we both recognize that they have not. They are one-time payments.

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I am really concerned. I must admit I am concerned that if the feds do it, how they are going to finance it. There are a lot of questions we have about how they finance it. I would hate to see them use somebody else's money like the EI fund. I would hate to see them avoid the real issue that is being part of national transportation infrastructure in a sustainable long-term manner. There is a lot at stake here, but I have never seen the time so ripe in 11 years of public office as now for us to make our case, engage Canadians in the debate and have some opportunity for success.

Mr. Jennissen: That is a very good argument. I certainly do not disagree with any of that. When the minister says dedicating the federal portion of the fuel tax, he is talking all of that. He is talking all of the 10 cents. He is not talking the 2 cents that lobby groups like CAA have advocated sporadically or year to year and that other lobby groups have as well.

He is saying: this is the money you collect, federal government, and this is what you should be returning into the road system.

That is a logical argument. I just have one question I would like to tie in. I would like to hear the minister's answer because I do not know how to answer it myself really. How do you get back to Mr. Collenette and Mr. Martin when they say it takes us X number of cents to service our debt out of the Canadian tax dollar and it only costs you 10 or 11 cents? In other words, a lot less. Their argument would be that we cannot afford this, which, I am sure, will be their argument. How do we get around that?

Mr. Praznik: There are a couple of things. First of all, yes, in Manitoba it would be $147 million of new revenue. Granted, we would lose somewhere else, I am sure, but $l47 million. I believe that my department, first of all, tells me that we should be spending in the neighbourhood of about $200 million a year. I look to Mr. Tinkler. He would, I think, feel he had died and gone to heaven if we gave him $20 million on our capital program, probably a little bit more on the maintenance program, et cetera. Obviously, there would be several tens of millions that I think should be made available to municipalities because they certainly–and not for them to do residential streets. Residential streets, just like municipal roads that are servicing remote communities, have to be borne by that local government. But certainly within municipalities, their RTAC system. Take the case of Winnipeg. Winnipeg looks after its major trucking routes through the city, yet they are of a provincial, even national significance, servicing the transportation industry. So there is role for the municipalities to have access to some of that revenue from fuel taxes. Certainly a piece of that I would like to see available for things like development of public transportation in urban areas, development of intermodal sites, some of the other things in northern development, the special projects we have to do that enhance our transportation network.

My department also told me, and we got talking about this early on in my first weeks of being minister, is that if we had all that money today, the construction industry in Manitoba and most of the country would not be able to gear up to do it all at one time. So it would take a number of years of phase-in to be able to bring that into operation. I think the national government should be sitting down with the provinces, discussing the concept, engaging Canadians in the debate. I think Canadians would find it very agreeable to have a dedicated tax. I think the national government has to still have a role. I would not want to see them walk totally away from it because we know, heaven forbid it would not happen in this province, but in others it may where those dollars do not always end up in developing a national road system. I think there is a role for them with that tax room or those dollars to be at the table saying a national priority is four-lane Trans-Canada Highway from sea to sea, and your share, province, has to be a No. 1 priority.

The Yellowhead route, four-laning that in very important stretches; again, building those east-west road links; building what I call the southern Canada border links, which are critical to our trade; building the southern Canada-northern links that allow us to be able access economic opportunity and people in our remote parts of the country that are still very much to be developed and to grow. There is where national government has a role in setting those particular priorities, and that is a role that I would like to see them in.

Now, when it comes to financing debt, I am not an expert on the national treasury, but I do know, having gone through many, many budget exercises, that it comes down to often matters of priority and where dollars are being spent. The national government has to work within its budget and its limitations. Its revenue growth has certainly been there over the last number of years. I guess when I talk about Canadians engaging in a national debate, if we do not have that debate at national level soon, not just about infrastructure, about what we can afford to spend and when on what collectively within the public, I see us now often robbing Peter to pay Paul. We know that health care demands will continue to grow, and I know that better than anyone, having been a minister of Health for two years. We know that an aging population and new technology will continue to draw an increasing share of the public dollars. But health care has to surely know what it can expect. We have to be able to assess what percentage of our revenues we can spend over a period of time, where we are putting into infrastructure.

These are difficult choices sometimes. We are left as politicians to make them on behalf of our constituents absolutely, but we deal with an electorate whose major source of information is the television news, the newspapers they read, and these kinds of balances we as politicians have to make every day, whether we be in government or opposition, in developing our policies, developing our legislation or our positions for general election often to get the public truly engaged in every aspect is very, very difficult.

So we need to have the media involved, as we need to have the national debate about where we are putting dollars and what the needs are. There has never been enough money for everything, but just like a household, you have to prioritize, and what I have come to realize is that the infrastructure needs that are so important to our competitiveness on a national basis, not just a provincial one, have for 30 years been getting an almost short end of the stick for other things. I do not know if Canadians will accept my version of how we should be balancing, but certainly it is time for that debate.

Mr. Jennissen: That is very interesting. A national debate on those infrastructures issues would certainly be most welcome. Whether that will take place, I do not know, because it appears to me there is a clash, again, of long-range needs for building infrastructure and short-range needs of politicians and political systems. In other words, what is more convenient to do within the next couple of years is often done rather than we are going to pay a lot more 10 years down the line unless we do this. What I am saying is, you know, we are kind of trapped where we have to make long-range decisions, but for short-term convenience we do not often make those decisions. I am talking now on a national level. I am not suggesting provincially.

The dedicated fuel tax, and using that for road construction, makes a lot of sense. There are other ways of doing this, and I am not advocating we do this, but I am familiar with Holland because I was raised there. When I visit my cousins, they are always complaining when they buy a car about how much they have to pay for I think they call it WTB or BTW. I am not sure what the initials stand for, but something to the effect that it is a road tax built into the purchase of actual the vehicle, so that I guess instead of having a vehicle at what would be a normal cost price here with a little bit of profit built in, the state also levies taxes on that vehicle and uses those taxes for roads, road upkeep. I do not think that would be very popular in this country, but I am sure there are other innovative ways of extracting taxes. I am not necessarily advocating them, but it might be worth looking at some different methods being used by different countries.

Going back to Mr. Collenette's supposed $3.5 billion over five years, I guess if he gave it to us all at once we could not match it for one thing, and probably the heavy industry could not do it anyway, but even over five years, I presume our share would come to what? About $28 million a year? Would that be a fair estimate that we would have to match?

Mr. Praznik: Depending, of course, on how money is divvied by percentage of population or percentage of road, but we estimate our share would be about 4.5 percent of the national payout. So depending on how they phased it, that is what we would expect to get on an annual basis. But you know, again, you can just see where probably short spending $70 or $80 million a year on an ongoing basis, this national program is not going to come anywhere near to meeting that.

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Mr. Jennissen: Well, just for the sake of argument, if, let us say, the $3.5 billion were a go, divided five years, that is $700 million, and let us say we have about 4 percent of that, that would be about $28 million or so, a little bit less perhaps, a little bit more, would we come up with that extra matching $28 million? In other words, we would jump from $110 million to approximately $160 million for a special capital project?

Mr. Praznik: Unless we have a significant surplus that allows the Treasury Board to give me, for this department, an extra $28 million a year, to match it with new money would be impossible. In the discussions we are having with the federal government, their leverage, when they look at matching, is on specific projects out of our existing budgets. So, again, they are looking at saying what builds the national highway network and, again, their correct role saying what projects do we need to do to build a national highway network. So, it is Trans-Canada, Yellowhead obviously, connectors to the border. Those are the obvious national highway projects.

Now, the concern that I would have as a northern MLA is if we were having to match 28 million bucks in a year and do all those projects on those great roads, where we are getting the $28 million from is out of the rest of the program. That is another concern with this. This is why I appreciate the need to build that national highway system, but, you know, if we are having to match it on those programs, again, I would hate to see that done at the detriment of the rest of the road network that we have to maintain.

Mr. Jennissen: So if I understand the minister correctly, he is saying that that $20-some million would not be new money then. We would not be talking about matching it with new money.

Mr. Praznik: Mr. Chair, that would depend on the financial circumstance of the–I do not think it would be a specific requirement that we would have to add to our base an extra $28 million to match that. I think the question is the money becomes available as long as we are matching it on a project-by-project basis, so we would, within our national criteria, say these are the roads that meet that criteria; we are putting up half; they would be putting up half, and we would be doing that project.

But, again, our $28 million would then likely come out of our regular $100 million, $110 million a year. Now, on those roads that would be of a national priority, I am looking to Mr. Tinkler, I do not think today they would command $28-million worth of projects, so, obviously, that means we would be having to take out of other things we would do.

Again, this is the struggle with this. It is great for them to say we want to spend this money; you are going to have to match us on this. But we have all the other responsibility off those national highways that we have to maintain, too. But that is the way national governments in Canada tend to operate, and particularly this one, that they do everything unilaterally. We saw it again today with Mr. Vanclief. Mr. Vanclief, the federal Minister of Agriculture, he could have easily got on the phone to his co-ministers from Manitoba and Saskatchewan and had a nice discussion with them about what he wants to do.

You know, not all of us in public life play politics all the time. Some of us, and I believe the member for Flin Flon (Mr. Jennissen) is one, actually like to do the job, and, you know, when someone is designing a program like that, sometimes a phone call to a compatriot to run the idea by them, and you say, hey, you know, this would work, then you can make the adjustments and get a better program for everybody and get everyone onside. Not Mr. Vanclief and not the Government of Canada that we have today. The desire to work co-operatively with provinces is certainly not a real one, I believe, on their part.

This is another example in the kind of discussions and planning that we are having on this program. We are not going to leave a penny on the table, but you feel at the end of the day really hamstrung because what we have been asking for is a federal investment in building a national highway system. I have no qualms that the federal government is going to use that money and say, Manitoba, you can only spend it on this part of your road network which is national in significance.

But when they say then that we have to come up with dollars to put in it, when they are already taxing that road network and only putting back a small bit, and then they are wanting us to have to have conditions of having to match out of our program or put in new money that is almost impossible, it just is maddening because that may mean that we have to go into other parts of the province and not do projects that are important to what I would call the provincial road network and highway network.

So this is not going to be easy. We are still negotiating with them, and I think the member senses my frustration. My preference would be that what they would say is: here is what we want on a national road system. Here in Manitoba is your 4-point-some percent, $28 million or $30 million a year for so many years, or whatever it works out to be. We agree on those projects; the money goes into those projects. If we want to enhance them, do others, we will, but we should not be robbing our regular provincial road network to pay for those.

But we may, to get that money, and, again, that is something, a decision of the national government as they put their dollars on the table. We will have to deal with it when that comes. It is certainly very frustrating.

Mr. Jennissen: I certainly buy the minister's argument about increased reliable and sustainable funding for the highway system across this country and the serious role that the feds have to play in this, but at the same time there is the $3.5 billion at least being talked about. I would like to get a feeling of how serious Collenette actually is, or is it just politicking and this will come to nothing. In other words, is it just another political ploy? The federal government is still a very popular government, and it mystifies me too why they get away with some of these things, throwing money at it one time and then that is all they have to do, because this is an ongoing concern. It ought to be an ongoing concern. Highways keep existing and they keep needing funding. They have to pull their fair weight, and they are not doing it. Maybe grandstanding just once is not going to do it either. But I do not know if they are grandstanding or if they are actually serious about this $3.5 billion. Does the minister have a sense of how serious Mr. Collenette is?

Mr. Praznik: That is a very good question but a very difficult one to answer. I get the sense on a personal basis that he is sincere. I like Mr. Collenette as a minister. I found him reasonable to deal with in my dealings to date, but he is part of a cabinet and there is a Minister of Finance and there are other agendas. I do get the sense that it is important for Mr. Collenette and some of his colleagues, particularly from the Toronto area, to ensure that there is enough breath in this program to deal with some urban transportation issues within metropolitan Toronto. I do not have any objection to that if that is where Ontario's priorities are as opposed to highway networks. But I would think that if we are going to be expected to be using our dollars, or these dollars, and matching them for what in essence is a national highway system, an east-west corridor, that the same kind of criteria will have to apply to those dollars being spent in Ontario or Quebec where there are much larger urban centres, or British Columbia, that to say, well, this is for a national transportation network but urban transit in Toronto is a national issue. Well, it really is not. It is a big local issue.

I mean there are trucking routes in and around Toronto that would be of a national significance in moving goods and services on a national basis, or goods on a national basis. So that is another issue we have to deal with.

Now, in the machinations of federal policymaking, who knows how this will work out, and again it is not our intention to leave any money on the table, but it is part of what is very, very frustrating about this process, very frustrating indeed. The member has referenced the fact that the national government is still very popular. Perhaps he and I should be working with the United Alternative to give the country another option. You know, I say very clearly it miffs me and I think perhaps the national media, with some exception, have really gone to sleep. There are very serious issues facing Canada today. For the last 10 years, we have seen most of the political action, in my opinion, particularly after the free trade debate. I would say the free trade debate was the last true national issue in Canada that had huge public attention and a good debate and a conclusion. Since then the fight against deficit spending has been led by the provinces. The balancing of budgets has taken place at the provincial level. The rationalization of services and rethink of government delivery mechanisms has taken place at the provincial level. The struggle to deal with issues of competitiveness has taken place at the provincial level.

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I say to the member for Flin Flon, he and I have been very fortunate. We have been at the level of government where I think the greatest action, foresight and planning in this decade has taken place. In provincial Legislatures and provincial parliament buildings right across Canada, of all political stripes, we have been struggling with the real issues that have to be addressed for Canadians as we enter the next century. Regrettably, the national leadership in these issues has not been there. In fact, if anything, often national government has been detrimental to working out arrangements. For example, in harmonization, various regulatory schemes, no role at all, where there should be one in co-ordinating.

So today, you know, again, we have a national government. Perhaps the reason they are popular is they stay away from dealing with the issues we really have to face. Their answer seems to be, well, education is an issue; we will have an education budget this year and throw a little money at it. Health is an issue; we will have a health budget. We will say we did something. Highways are an issue; we will have a highways budget. At the end of the day, that does not address the real issues that we face as Canadians. Regrettably, again, I think a good portion of the national media has gone to sleep. They cover the one-off stories of the day in the House of Commons. This person said this. This person asked a silly question. This was the answer. But I have seen very little critical analysis at the national level of the fundamental issues that we have to address as Canadians to become competitive or remain competitive and be able to live within our means and be prosperous into the next century. I have seen very little debate at the national level, or planning in that area. This is just one more example of it. Regrettably, without the media continuing to raise these kinds of issues, or an opposition who are raising these issues in a manner that gets the attention of the media, Canadians as a nation continue to drift. But at the provincial level much of the work is being done.

That is not the way I think to have a nation. But the member for Flin Flon (Mr. Jennissen)–where Mr. Collenette will be? I am not sure. Another concern I have is how they intend to fund this. I would like to see them have the plan. Then they can be criticized for whatever or applauded for whatever funding mechanism they use, but that is another question. Where will their money come from? I would hate to see it come from a source like Employment Insurance, because ultimately I do not believe that is their money. It belongs to employers and employees who have paid into it like any other insurance scheme.

So there are lots of questions here. My guess is there will be some kind of program. If we can create enough issue that they have to do something, they will do something, but we have to make sure that it is not just a one-off opportunity to say, here, we have thrown some money at the problem. Let us wipe our hands and go away back to the bunker, go in for a while, and come out in another six months willing to solve another problem out there on a temporary, one-shot basis. It is not the way to run a country, and I think Canada will pay the price for it in the not too distant future.

I can count on one thing though. I do not think the member for Flin Flon nor the member for Lac du Bonnet nor the member for La Verendrye (Mr. Sveinson) nor the member for Portage la Prairie (Mr. Faurschou) who are here today cast ballots in support of that national government.

Mr. Jennissen: Yes, the minister is on to some safe bets there. There is no doubt about that.

We realize how fundamental road systems are, how fundamental transportation links are. I agree with the minister; we ought to lament lack of leadership on the federal level. That makes me wonder, and perhaps the minister can answer this question: if infrastructure is not sexy, does not sell well to the general public, how come other countries are much more successful, and particularly the United States? I know they have a different political structure and so on, but they do seem to get the funding. Surely infrastructure there must be equally unsexy, and yet they are willing to invest the capital to build their roads. How can they get the necessary dollars and we cannot?

Mr. Praznik: Again, another excellent question, and one I have had some opportunity to explore with Canada-U.S. legislators project, and to reflect upon in this new portfolio.

Perhaps a little bit broader perspective, I have come to an observation after being in this place for 11 years, involved actively in politics for 13, that since about the 1970s we have really disconnected our electorate from their money. What I mean by that is if you go back to some years ago, the member may recall–I do not know where he spent his youth, but in the '50s and '60s in Manitoba, and I was pretty young at the time too, but I can still remember vaguely some of them in the mid-'60s, the old money referendum. At the municipal level if you were building a major work, you required it. Your council only had approval to spend a certain amount of money on capital works. You were required to have a ratepayers' referendum on whether you wanted to do that project or not, whether people were prepared to pay the tax for that. Now I am not advocating we go back to that in its form, but there was a real connect between the ratepayer paying the tax and the service for which it was being collected.

In the '70s in Canada, we got into a very large movement to do away with all of those again–direct forms of taxation, levies with referendum attached to them, et cetera, and we said we would collect the money in a common pot, and the Legislature through cabinet would spend it for the common good and make all the decisions. I can remember coming in this place and having discussions with then ministers of Finance who said we do not want to give up our flexibility to make decisions. The result has been that our ratepayers pay into a common pot and sort of say you make the decision, but I have no direct say where my taxes go. That disconnect has seen itself come up in a number of ways I think that are not positive.

We are in the process of building a school we just approved in part of my constituency. I remember when that school committee got together some years ago, one of the individuals at it said, you know, this school is great because it is free. The province pays for it. Well, it is not free. It is paid for by taxes actually by the education support levy on property, but the disconnect was there. If I have to pay for it on my property taxes and see I am paying for this, well, that is one thing, but if the province is paying for it, it is free. Hospitals are free.

I saw that as Health minister which was really amazing–and I do not deny for one moment anybody the services they require, do not get me wrong–but I remember looking at whether it be drug treatments or surgery or care where the costs would be tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the person you were dealing with would be fundamentally mad over some issue, knowing that they had just had expended on them what may be a hundred Manitoba families or 50 families had to work and pay taxes for, for a whole year. I do not blame them for that individually, but it was the disconnect. It is free because I do not pay for it. I do not see how much it is costing; I expect the service.

That is a problem I think we have as politicians in dealing with an electorate that has had that disconnect. The reason is it all goes into a pool. We make the decisions, they hear about it in the media, and an electorate that is tired of paying taxes believes it is overtaxed–I think rightly so–and does not see really the connection. Certainly, when you are paying a half a billion dollars a year in debt and interest payments–we are provincially–and 30 percent of the national revenue going to pay interest payments on 30 years of borrowing, I mean, you just say, I pay more I get less service, this system is corrupt. What is corrupt about it is 30 years we took away the connection between the taxpayer and the service, and we borrowed a bunch of money, and we are asking another generation to pay it back.

So, having said that, why is the United States more successful in it? Because they still have kept–and I am not a great advocate for the American system; I am a British parliamentarian type–but I think they have kept in their system many more connects between the ratepayer, the taxpayer, and the service that is being bought. The national law in the United States indicates you cannot raise a tax on fuel unless the money is going to the transportation system, to the road system. Many states will have votes in their election years on whether to raise a penny or two in a number of years, et cetera, on the litre or a gallon of gasoline to pay for specific projects. So people know that I am paying that tax and I voted for it and I agree because it is a priority, I hate that road, and the connect is there between the two.

The struggle for us I think as we begin a new century is how we put back into public decision making that connect between the voters and their money and where we spend it on. In other jurisdictions, particularly the United States, you can just see that connect. I remember friends in Colorado who–there, every two years they have their election–went and voted to put a tax on I do not know what, I cannot remember what it was. That money was going to develop a trail and park system. It was in their county, so I guess it was on the property. But people debated it. Do we need it? Is it important? At the end of the day, they made a choice, and when that is paid for, the tax will come off. So there are a lot of things to be said about reconnecting voters and their money and the services they are particularly purchasing.

It does not work for everything. I certainly would not advocate that in Health, but I will tell you one thing that I, having spent two years in health care–where that reconnect is missing. It would be very interesting to see if each citizen in Manitoba annually got a statement that said this is your access to the health care system and your family over the last year, and this is what it cost. I think what it would do is voters would appreciate that that service that they now get for free in their mind has a cost and that they are paying for it and should demand value for money and service for what is being paid, and that always is not the case.

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So I say to the member for Flin Flon, the more we can do at the end of the day, particularly in highways–everywhere I go, everywhere I have talked about this, I am surprised, truly, at the level of support I get for dedicating fuel taxes to roads. I think it is because people then appreciate and want to know that every time they put that nozzle in their gas tank and they press that lever and those dials spin and they open their wallet or take out their credit card and they are putting in $20, $30, that the taxes they are paying are going back into their road. It gives them a direct connection between their money and the service they are getting.

Today they do not have that. Ten cents of every litre goes to Ottawa and to get it back, if we even get it back or even part of it back because we are not east of the Ottawa River, we end up getting–the connect is not there. I apologize for the long answer, but the member is onto one of my favourite topics.

Mr. Jennissen: I am discovering that, Mr. Minister. It is an important topic, but I am just wondering–well, first of all, get back to the disconnect. I can certainly empathize with that. I hear it a lot from some of my people as well, some of the voters. I can certainly empathize with the miner in Leaf Rapids who pays lots of income tax and fuel tax and property tax and drives south on 391 and loses probably his fuel tank or his windshield will go. So he is saying, look, I am paying a lot of tax, but what am I getting out it? So I can see that sometimes on a very individual level.

I was going to ask the minister a more general question, if I can get more general. They have been very general. Why does the minister feel optimistic that with dedicated fuel taxes that the federal government, which has opted out so much in transportation whether it be ports or airports and so on, would show the slightest inclination to go this direction, and furthermore, what would prevent them from simply saying, okay, we will go along, we will just add more money, we will add another five cents to the litre or whatever? They are capable of doing that as well. I do not know why there would be a sense of optimism that they would go this route.

Mr. Praznik: Mr. Chair, first of all, I think it is that Canadians need to have the debate, and I am a great advocate for the debate. If they do not want to go this route, let them make an argument why they should not. The member is asking me some very good questions. I will tell you why–I think Canadians have, as we talked about, a national government who today is not addressing these issues. They put them off, put them off, throw some dollars, say: we are going to do this, one-time budget, we sort of fix the problem, are we not nice guys.

I think we are coming to a day in the not too distant future, quite frankly, when the bubble will burst. I think Canadians will wake up one day in the morning, have their coffee and realize they have to be addressing these issues, and what are they hearing about it? The media and the Canadian public will expect these issues to be addressed, and I think the current government of the day will be inadequate, have done inadequate preparation and will not be able to meet that.

Quite frankly, I am hoping, I can see that this issue has a potential to become part of a national debate and to catch fire because Canadians see the declining–they see a road system that is getting tired. They drive it every day with all its potholes. Believe me, in my constituency after a rain on some of our gravel roads, Barry Tinkler and I, Monday is not a pleasant day. Start Sunday afternoon. People see it, and they know it. I think what is going to happen is you cannot ignore these too much longer. The Canadian public is going to want them to be addressed.

I think the current government in Ottawa is going to find that it is a fire storm that they cannot put out, that will continue to grow. I expect that other political parties and the current one governing our nation will pick up on this issue to give the contrast, and they will say that part of our national agenda is to address these issues; here is how we will address it. The current government will say, no, we do not want to do that, and there will be a contrast set up where Canadians will have to make a choice on issues just like Canadians had to on free trade. I mean, whether you were for or against it. I know our political parties took different points of view, but it was clear when people were voting that there were visions of the country, there were issues, and it was one federal election, I remember, that really counted in determining the future of the country, whatever side you were on.

I see coming in the not too distant future a similar kind of an election in Canada where the role of a national government in addressing these issues, because they cannot be put off too much longer, will happen. One side in that political debate, or one part of it, will take these bold, innovative views, I think, to meet our infrastructure needs and dedicate a tax, and the current administration likely will not, and Canadians perhaps will have the great privilege of being able to decide their future in that polling station in which this is one of the issues.

I think I have a role to play as a provincial minister today in getting it into that agenda. Now maybe I will be wrong. Maybe the current minister in government will see this fire storm, realize it is the right thing to do and do it without that kind of a debate. I really hope that happens. But I think the time is ripe to make it part of the national agenda, an agenda that I think will be in a great sense of change over the next few years. If we are lucky as Canadians, we will see this become an issue in which we will have the opportunity to make a very clear choice in determining where we want to be in the next century in the future direction of our country on these important issues.

Mr. Jennissen: I would like to ask at least one more, I guess you would call it a macro-question, general question. Maybe we will get into some more specific stuff today yet. I hate to bring it up, but it is the Kyoto Protocol that we did sign as a nation. I am mystified in my own mind how that would work. We are talking on the one hand we are going to lower greenhouse emissions and so on, I guess also conserve to some degree fossil fuel resources and so on. It sounds very good environmentally, but on a day-to-day basis, on a year-to-year basis, it appears to me we have bigger trucks on the road. We have got more emission, and we want the economic activity. I just do not see how we can resolve what appears to be, on the surface, two contradictory directions.

I know the government federally says we have to take the environment seriously, but on a basic level, we are also saying economic activity demands this, this and this, and certainly the internal combustion engine is very much a part of it. We could argue that maybe railroads or trains would use less fossil fuels, but even that direction is changing as most of the goods and commodities are hauled by trucks nowadays, and larger trucks. So I guess I see a conflict there that I cannot really resolve. I would welcome the minister's opinion on this.

Mr. Praznik: Mr. Chair, again a very interesting area to explore. As an historian, I just for a moment ask the member and the indulgence of members of the committee to just travel back a couple of hundred years ago to the Industrial Revolution in the United Kingdom, the first European nation really to industrialize heavily or at least the development of the steam engine, railroads with that, the mining industry, all of it on coal, to the point where, by the end of the Second World War, the United Kingdom was heavily polluted–if you look at the London fog, you know, mostly soot from burning coal in all of those houses, all of those issues. Quite an environmental degradation had taken place, and yet today I would suggest the United Kingdom uses more units of energy than it ever has in its history.

Now there are other problems with nuclear–and those are being addressed–and other sources. But if you travel the United Kingdom today, you do not see anywhere near what you would have seen 50 years ago or a hundred years ago. Science and human innovation have moved us forward and saved our bacon, so to speak, on many occasions. Again, science and innovation have to be called upon to deal with these issues that surround Kyoto. What concerns me, and I would expect would concern the member for Flin Flon, is when we hear federal officials advancing as their solution the introduction of a 10-cents-a-litre Kyoto tax–I call it the Chretien tax–to discourage the use of motor vehicles.

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I ask the member for Flin Flon, because I am having trouble with that, how in his constituency will raising the price 10 cents a litre really reduce travel? His constituents have all kinds of options with which to conduct their daily business and live their lives. Mine do not in Lac du Bonnet. We do not have the kinds of numbers that warrant or the convenience of a public transportation system. Yes, you can fill a bus a couple of times a day from Victoria Beach to Winnipeg, but you could not provide the convenience in hours or drop-off locations that people need to live their lives. So what we would see with that solution, in my view, is a tax on fuel, making it more expensive for families to get around and do their business. Another hardship on them, very little reduction in fuel consumption because most of our constituents have to do their driving and do the things that they need to do, and at the end of the day the federal government will scoop up that money. They certainly would not probably put it into the road system or they would use it to develop public transportation in parts of the country where the disadvantaged with that fuel tax would not live.

So we have great concerns about how the federal government is approaching its Kyoto requirements. We think that in dealing with Kyoto, the answer is to look forward, to be more innovative, to find better ways, more efficient ways of using fuel, reducing emissions, reducing pollution and moving the world forward so that we are not curtailing economic activity. The United Kingdom did not come to grips with its pollution problems and its use of coal, and I imagine growing up in Holland–I do not know what age the member left Holland, but certainly Holland was a big consumer of coal in those days, too, and I am sure he was born and growing up. Those countries did not solve their problem by saying we are not going to use any more fuel. We are going to go back to burning peat and not having industry and not moving around and not having trains. They moved forward by finding other means of energy, improving the efficiencies of the energy they were using and cleaning up their production in a manner that was more environmentally friendly. Europe is probably greener today than it was 40 or 50 years ago in the days of heavy use of coal.

So we have to move forward on that basis. I think it really calls for innovation, but the simple answer that is often touted by the feds is just we will put on a fuel tax and that will be great because people will drive less. Well, the voters in Lac du Bonnet constituency do not have a lot of options but to drive. Given their numbers, they will never get the convenience that they enjoy today. I know there is a public transportation system in Flin Flon, because you have some numbers around that city, if I am not mistaken, but certainly your voters in the outlying areas would be in the same position as mine. So we have to be innovative; we have to continue to advance that.

I spoke at a conference at noon today regarding the rail industry and the environment, and I engaged in a discussion with an academic who was a very strong advocate for fuel taxes. But, then again, that individual does not have far to go to work in the morning and lives close to where they work and all those things. I made the challenge: if you want to advocate for that, come and run against me in Lac du Bonnet in the next election on that issue. He was not prepared to do that.

So again it is easy for people to talk about our answers, but they have to be saleable to the public. The only way I believe they ultimately are is if the solutions are innovative and do the job in a manner that moves us forward rather than moving us back.

Mr. Jennissen: The minister is correct that the federal solution or possible solution of simply raising taxes on fuel would go over like a lead balloon in my part of the world. People in, let us say, Leaf Rapids, to use one example, are already paying 10 cents, 15 cents more a litre than you are right here in Winnipeg, at least 10 cents a litre more for gasoline, and if you were to add another 10 cents to that, you know, it becomes astronomical. I would see gasoline selling at a dollar a litre or something. By the way, when I go to Europe, they are charging $2.30 in Holland right now I believe, in Dutch cents, but it is still around $2 a litre. So I mean it could go up, but I hope it does not, and certainly it would not be very welcome in my part of the world.

I was going to switch the topic somewhat and ask some other questions. One question I have is we really never got, at least I do not remember getting, a firm figure on what it cost us in terms of infrastructure damage in the '97 flood, the flood of the century. I know some infrastructure was damaged, road infrastructure, and it did cost us money, but was that money reimbursed in the sense that the feds put in a certain percentage? What was the federal proportion of that?

Mr. Praznik: Mr. Chair, I know this is a very important set of numbers. If the member will indulge my staff and myself, I am going to have my staff do that breakdown for the member for tomorrow and then give us a breakdown. Just to understand, he would like to know what our total infrastructure, not only the department but what was done, damage to infrastructure, municipal, and if we know that. We can endeavour to see what information we can get and then what was paid for by the federal government. We will endeavour to have a chat with the people tomorrow morning at EMO to see if we can give you as complete a picture as possible.

Mr. Jennissen: I just was basically concerned about the federal portion or how much the feds had actually contributed, if anything. I never really got a clear answer on that, and I would like to sort of have that clarified.

One other area I would like to talk about–we do not have an awful lot of time left–but get some of these general macro issues out of the way. The creation of Nunavut a little while ago filled a lot of us in Manitoba and all of Canada with joy. There were some concerns about it as well, particularly with the Dene nation in northern Manitoba. I guess Nunavut existing as a separate entity now just highlights the fact that we are going to be dealing with it a lot more. We are going to be expanding the trade links a lot more, at least that is the feeling I have. I referenced it earlier when I said we are talking about studies where we are going to see how likely it is to build roads and bring power lines to that northern area. Now what is the status of those studies? Are there any blueprints of what is likely to happen or how it is going to happen?

Mr. Praznik: Specifically, I know we are doing a transportation study with Nunavut on their needs. That will be ready, I am told, in August. I am not familiar with the power line issues. That would be the Hydro minister. But one of the issues for them, of course, is a very small territory population-wise, and the new government getting itself together. I would not say these projects are on the cusp of being done.

I say to the member, the development or the finding of a few good ore deposits, a number of things, would certainly go a long way to probably speeding them up and having the national government involved, because it is a federal territory, and important too, but we are doing the transportation study with them. It will be ready in August. Sometime thereafter, later in the fall, the member may want to ask me for it, and we will see if we can provide it to him.

Mr. Jennissen: At this time, is there sort of a predisposition, if there were to be a road, that it would take the Churchill route rather than the Lynn Lake–Leaf Rapids–Tadoule Lake route?

Mr. Praznik: There are five potential options that are being explored in the study. One is the Churchill-Arvalik-Whale Cove-Rankin Road. Option 1(a) I guess would be the winter ice route along the Hudson Bay coast, which would be another version of that. Option 2 would be Gillam-Churchill-Arvalik-Whale Cove-Rankin. Option 3 would be Lynn Lake-Tadoule Lake-Arvalik-Whale Cove-Rankin. Option 4 would be Lynn Lake-Arvalik-Whale Cove-Rankin. Option 5 would be Lynn Lake-Arvalik-Whale Cove-Rankin, another particular alignment.

Mr. Jennissen: When the minister says let us say Scenario 3 Lynn Lake-Arvalik, et cetera, if that were a potentiality, would that road then connect Brochet-Lac Brochet-Tadoule Lake? Would they be within striking range of that road?

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Mr. Praznik: Mr. Chair, Option 3 would be Lynn Lake-Tadoule Lake-Arvalik-Whale Cove-Rankin, and Brochet and Lac Brochet would be very close to the route, so a connection would not be impossible.

Mr. Jennissen: This is still in the study stage and nothing will be known until–

Mr. Praznik: Mr. Chair, I am advised that kind of work will be completed in August.

Mr. Jennissen: Are there any rough ballpark figures in terms of dollars attached to this? Because it seems like an extremely expensive project.

Mr. Praznik: Mr. Chair, these are very rough estimates that we have. Again, you know, just sort of an eyeballing it based on building to full standards, et cetera, not something less, but a full standard road. Just to give you some numbers: for the first route, which would be Churchill-Arvalik-Whale Cove-Rankin would be 956 kilometres. The construction cost is about, estimated, and again very rough, $1.6 billion. Just to put it in perspective, that would be a little under one-third of the entire provincial budget of our province. The annual maintenance would be about $8 million.

Just looking at that, if we were to do a winter road, which would then be 1,052 kilometres, the year one construction of it would be $17 million with a $6-million maintenance. You can tell winter roads have a financial saving that is pretty significant.

Route 2, which is the Gillam-Churchill-Arvalik-Whale Cove-Rankin, would be 1,233 kilometres, estimated construction costs $1.9 billion, annual maintenance $10 million.

Number 3 which is Lynn Lake-Tadoule Lake-Arvalik-Whale Cove-Rankin would be 1,193 kilometres, $1.6 billion, $10 million annual maintenance.

Route 4, Lynn Lake-Arvalik-Whale Cove-Rankin, would be 1,229 kilometres approximately and a construction cost of $1.5 billion, $10 million annual operating.

Route 5, Lynn Lake-Arvalik-Whale Cove-Rankin, with a different alignment than route four, would be 1,290 kilometres, $1.7 billion to construct, $11 million a year to operate.

So as the member can see, the economics of building that kind of road, we would have to have some significant partners who would have economic interest in developing it. When you consider that that $1.2 billion would probably take care of all of our highway projects, if I had $1.2 billion to spend right across the province, the member for Flin Flon would have such good roads, his constituency would probably want to return a Conservative member.

Mr. Jennissen: Either that or thank me for getting the Conservatives to do this is a possibility, too.

I thank the minister because that is very interesting. So would it be fair then to say that this is a long-range dream? It is a study, all right, but any portion of that becoming concrete is unlikely, would that be fair to say?

Mr. Praznik: Mr. Chair, I can guarantee him it will not be concrete which that road will be built with.

The member has been around here with me many years in this Legislature. The kinds of numbers we are talking are just so significant that it is highly unlikely. If they prove to be the numbers, it is highly unlikely that we would see this in the foreseeable future. But, then again, there are a lot of reasons why a road like that can be important.

The Alaska Highway was a terribly uneconomic road until war broke out with Japan and the Americans had to get a lot of equipment and people and personnel up into Alaska real quick. All of a sudden, during wartime, the Alaska Highway got built. It never would have likely been built for decades without the war. I am not proposing that we need a war with someone to build this road, but some other unforeseen circumstance, major mineral deposits being discovered, I would suggest probably a major petroleum find in Hudson Bay, you know, something that would see a major economic development that would require the movement of lots of stuff into a place. The reason we have a road to Gillam today is because we have hydroelectric dams there, and we had a lot of stuff to move in.

So, again, you never want to say never. Just like I told my constituency who built a school, it may seem impossible today but you keep working at it. It took us 10 years or eight years, and we have the school. So people have to keep with it, and depending on the future you never know what it holds, but it is a very expensive road. So one gets a sense of the enormity of the kind of development that would have to take place. Even the resupply numbers, if you look at the cost of supplying those territories in goods and services, I suspect that they are just not there to justify that kind of construction cost.

Mr. Jennissen: As well, I would like to point out to the minister that there is some concern, that even though this is still a dream project and the chance of it even being realized within the next 20, 30 years is probably somewhat remote I am guessing, the Dene have already registered some concerns.

I am just wondering if the minister or anybody in the Highways department has even, at a very preliminary stage, approached them on the issues of the concerns that they have because they are saying if this road crosses our territory we want some longstanding issues addressed. In the case of the Northlands Dene in Lac Brochet, I think it is treaty land entitlement probably that they are talking about. In the case of the Sayisi Dene, it is also forced relocation in the '50s, wanting an apology from the federal government and compensation, plus there are some hunting and fishing rights issues as well. Now, because they have been on record with the support of some other aboriginal organizations as opposing that, unless those issues were dealt with, I am just wondering if those groups had been approached and there had been some preliminary discussions?

Mr. Praznik: First of all, our study is really a logistics analysis. Before one can even approach anybody, one wants to know what the consequences or the logistics are of building a road and what works from that perspective. But I have to say to the member that any kind of road of that magnitude is likely to require a federal environmental study and a licence because it will cross borders. It will also have to be a partnered project with the national government which will bring on that process. I tell you, as a province, we would not want to be going into that kind of construction and a partnership with the feds and Nunavut if all these other issues were not addressed first, because we know the consequences as Manitobans in building power dams without dealing with the issues first, and we still have one northern flood agreement to complete. It goes on forever.

So today, we simply would not do that. These issues would have to be addressed in a reasonable fashion. Legitimate issues for which there is a legal right to be pursued would have to be addressed before we would ever want to enter into that kind of project. But again, looking at the magnitude of the levels of expenditure, unless there is some very significant event or economic development that would in essence justify that level of expenditure, I just do not see this happening in a long time. I would suggest, and I have not looked at the economics of a hydro line, but I would think it was probably far better or far cheaper at some point if you have enough power demand. Again, there may not even be enough power demand in many of these communities to justify the cost today, but if you had some very significant power demand growth in Nunavut, mining, smelting–I doubt if it would be a smelter, but certainly mining and processing–of mineral wealth that would justify bringing in a line, that is probably a more likelihood of having a power line system come in eventually than having a roadway. That would probably be the first step.

Mr. Jennissen: If I could go back to one of the scenarios again. The first one, 1(a), I believe the one through Churchill, would that be run alongside the railroad or beside the rail bed? I am trying to visualize how that would work, the road.

Mr. Praznik: That is part of the logistics in mapping that is being done in the study, so that is something they would have to assess. I know there is a much better esker in that particular area that would provide a much sounder bed. I guess if the railway would have been on the esker, it would have been probably a better railroad than it is today, but those are issues that that logistics study will tell us about.

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Mr. Jennissen: I know it is perhaps doing this at the last minute, but is the minister prepared to move on to airports, particularly the report of the northern airports released by Mr. Findlay November 6? That was the report by the provincial airport safety working group and was in response to the tragic air crash in Little Grand Rapids earlier which drew attention to the need for, I think, some major changes and upgrading needed in a lot of the northern airports. So could the minister respond in general, first of all, to that report?

Mr. Praznik: With the kind wishes of the committee, I would like Mr. Hosang just to give us a rundown rather than him tell me and me repeat it. He will just give you a review of what was in that report, because it dealt with the general safety and maintenance of airports generally. Also, I think if we could give him a moment or two to respond on the specific report with respect to, I believe it is Little Grand Rapids where we had the tragedy and whether or not the airport was a factor in that tragedy.

Mr. Chairperson: Is it the will of the committee that Mr. Hosang would answer on this particular subject? [agreed]

Mr. John Hosang (Assistant Deputy Minister, Engineering and Technical Services Division): First of all, yes. The accident did prompt the study. It was sort of the issue that brought the department and the First Nations together to look at the safety situation with respect to all the airports that the province maintains throughout the North, all 22, not specifically Little Grand Rapids. The issue of the accident at Little Grand Rapids is being investigated by the federal National Transportation Safety Board, which the member may be aware of.

Generally, the report found that the airports, they are certified by Transport Canada, which means they follow certain standards that Transport Canada dictates if the airports are to be used for public transportation, and the airports did meet the requirements. The issue is that they were built, and I think the member referred to it in his opening remarks, they were built for a different decade. Aircraft nowadays need longer runways generally than what we have got there. They can operate into these airports now, but there are restrictions on the types of operations that they have to fly. So the report in essence prepared a benchmark in terms of what is out there now, the lengths and the facilities that are available, the navigation aids. We drew some standards up which were accepted by the minister, Minister Findlay, as to how these airports should be expanded basically in length in the future to meet the requirements now and in the foreseeable future of the various air carriers that fly into the North.

We consulted with the carriers, asked them what kind of aircraft they thought they would use in the future, and that information was used to determine the various lengths that we thought were appropriate in the future. The member may be aware that our basic length was 3,000 feet to accommodate the air ambulance, that safety of life and limb was of the utmost importance and that a lot of other activities can operate on that premise of 3,000 feet, but the driving factor was to provide that level of service to all communities. Then from there, depending on the size of the community, the strip length increased again based on projections as well as actual states at the current point in time where the runway should be lengthened to meet those needs. We came up with many recommendations, including the need for some navigation aids, basically approach aids for the airports. We costed out many of them, and the cost was just under $44 million, so that was the essence of the report.

Mr. Jennissen: So how many of the existing 22 airports are under 3,000 feet, four or five?

Mr. Hosang: There are eight airports that do not have the 3,000 feet now.

Mr. Jennissen: Prior to 3,000 feet–what, to accommodate that particular medivac plane? I am not sure where we arrived at the figure, because I believe in Ontario the length is longer for most airports.

Mr. Jennissen: Pukatawagan would be one of those airports under 3,000. I wonder if you could give me a status report of what is happening there.

Mr. Hosang: We have been working at that site over the past year, removing rock from the one end that was prohibiting us from getting it certified to Transport Canada standards. We have removed the rock. Unfortunately, we had to go back in a couple of times because they did not quite remove enough the first time, and we have a project on the program this year with the current budget that will allow us to build 3,000 feet, a full 3,000-foot runway there this year.

Mr. Jennissen: So that would be completed by the end of the year.

Mr. Hosang: In the current fiscal year, yes.

Mr. Jennissen: Lac Brochet, we had some problems with the muskeg, specifically on the apron portion and one side of the airstrip as well. Is that just located in a bad spot because it seems to me we are going to have more problems there in the near future? It does not look like stable ground to me.

Mr. Hosang: Are you referring to the fact that it was closed down for several days a few months or so ago?

Mr. Jennissen: Yes, I am and also that one of the planes actually got stuck in the apron because apparently that is built over top of muskeg. If I remember correctly, the chief told me that there are plans in the works to lengthen that airstrip. But, flying it a few times, I am not quite clear where that–well, it would have to be lengthened obviously on the muskeg end because it cannot go into the lake, not unless we want to spend a lot of money, and that looks like awfully deep muskeg there, so I am not quite sure what the plans are to upgrade that airport.

Mr. Hosang: Yes, that runway, first of all, to address this softness issue and the aircraft sinking into the apron, that was sort of an abnormal condition of very, very wet conditions, rapid thaw, and the staff just were not able to keep the surface compacted and they had some equipment problems that caused the situation to be dragged out a little longer than what we would have expected. We think that generally though, however, the airstrip that is there is reliable under normal conditions that you would attribute to gravel runways. Our intent is to extend, yes, into the boggy area. I do not have the engineering detail right now. We are working on that.

I mean we were just advised. Of course, with the funding availability, we are looking at the amount of effort required, but we plan to be able to extend the runway into that area. We have been very successful where we have put runways, generally we get stable surfaces.

Mr. Chairperson: Order, please. The time being six o'clock, committee rise.