I would like to address the road building and cost of "said road" if I may... My information comes from driving on 2 very different types of road that are attached in Northern Manitoba where I had the "privilege" of working between May, 2015 until February, 2016. This is based on PR 280 between Thompson, Manitoba and Gillam/Fox Lake I.R. I was told by someone who has lived in Gillam all his life that they tendered out the road between Thompson and Gillam to the lowest bidder. He described the construction of the road like this... Pushed whatever was on the surface into the road bed and covered it with enormous amounts of gravel/shale. This PR Hwy has been on the news in the past couple of years as the "worst driveable" road in Manitoba. I believe that I was told that it did come in on budget, however. This road is horrendous, to say the least... Imagine 50+ areas of "road" where you drive through 10+ "boils" per mile... Even after my 15th - 20th time driving that 300 km stretch of road, I never could remember where every one of those spots are. Add to that fact that during the spring and summer months, these boils can spring up literally over night... Oh, before I go on, a boil is a stretch of road where the firm gravel surface you have been driving on suddenly gives way to a stretch between 10 - 100 meters long that turns into soft, rutted potholes starting the size of a Honda Civic. If you hit this at 100 km/hr, there is a small chance that it will suck you into the ditch... Did I mention that some of these ditches can be over 50 feet down at an angle of about 60 degrees as you climb up onto an esker? There is currently a large amount of heavy trucks hauling heavy loads on this road to where the Hydro Electric dam is being built at Keeyask and also a few hours further East to Keewatinohk where there is a Huge Convertor station also under construction. Here is where the difference comes in on the roads. I believe that it was in the past 10 years or so (don't quote the time as I did not research this but the road is not very old) that the Province decided to extend PR 290 which takes off of PR 280 just East of Long Spruce generating station towards Limestone Generating Station and now, Keewatinohk... I was again told that there is a stretch of road just past Limestone River that was dubbed, "The million dollar per mile" road. This road also bears a lot of heavy trucks bringing up material and equipment for the construction of the convertor station and possibly for another large power dam called Conawapa... This road had a base of large blasted boulders put down as a road bed followed by increasingly smaller and smaller rock and finally, gravel. This road you can put your cruise control on at 100 km/hr and if you do hit a 1-2 foot long pothole, it will be fixed shortly after it is reported... This is an amazing road considering where it is... The whole point of this post is to express my opinion, after driving on Northern roads during every season, that this road should be built "right" as it would end up costing a ton of time and lost trucking opportunity while the road would get repaired, especially in Spring and Summer. These are not small repairs as some may believe but substantial repairs that may shut trucking down for days or even weeks at a time which would greatly diminish the ability to move the mining production material out of the north to market. Get it Right when building the road... It may cost more in the beginning to build it but your savings will be multiples returned compared to loss of productivity and costs of repair, not to mention the possible loss of life on a poorly built road... I've both seen and drove on these Northern roads within the past year so I know a little bit about them... That being said, Getting it Right SHOULD BE starting in a month or 2 because all parties involved have had MORE THAN ENOUGH time to start the process already. I am ashamed to call myself Canadian already after reading and hearing about anyone and everyone who thinks that they "deserve" anything more than a good paying job in this country. May God be Merciful to us all!! I have made my way in this country myself without any handouts or support for the past 52+ years and no, I do not live in the small town where I grew up on the farm... Nor am I without injury from the work I do as a Power Lineman. 2 back surgeries and a rebuilt ACL in my right knee later and I still Love to climb poles to repair things to get people's electricity back on!! But, I went to where the work was... Hmm, novel idea, that. GLTE, Herb