Former Sahtu MLA Norman Yakeleya knew the score when in 2014 he opined, “You know, we've been waiting since the '70s – what's a few more years?"
He was talking about long-awaited funding for the Mackenzie Valley Highway project.
News/North columnist Cece Hodgson-McCauley, who made the highway her singular life mission for more than 35 years before her death in April, would have enjoyed hearing the $140-million funding announcement last month toward an all-weather route that will some day link the Deh Cho to the Beaufort.
The money will be used to pay for the construction of a bridge over the Great Bear River, a 14-km road extension from Wrigley to Mount Gaudet, and further studies for the future construction of an all-season highway.
No doubt there will be immediate benefits from this work – upwards of 400 jobs once construction begins in 2021. Presumably, most of those jobs will go to people living in the area.
But, the question still needs to be asked: Is building the highway the right priority right now?
The business case submitted to Infrastructure Canada by the territorial government in 2015 points to untapped underground riches of shale oil and gas along the Mackenzie Valley and natural gas in the Beaufort Delta.
Unfortunately, it's all moonbeams and unicorns at this point. Oil production in Norman Wells is on life support and Ottawa, which is forking over $102.5 million of the $140 million for the highway, has effectively killed natural gas in the Beaufort Delta with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's moratorium on offshore drilling in 2016.
More problematic for the territory is competition with Alberta and B.C., who have oceans of shale potential that is far easier to exploit. The NWT is going to have to get in line if and whenever oil and gas companies decide it's time to seek out new reserves, not to mention the tremendous political difficulties they will face in today's social climate trying to extract oil and gas near the Mackenzie River. Twice, dating back to the Thomas Berger inquiry in the mid-1970s, they have tried to build a pipeline down the Mackenzie Valley and twice they have failed twice.
As for tourism potential, there will be one more dusty road for a few brave tourists to venture but it is unlikely that will translate into an economic boom any time soon. There is already a way to get to the Arctic Ocean via the Dempster Highway through the Yukon and the recently completed Inuvik-to-Tuktoyaktuk Highway.
The people of the Mackenzie Valley deserve a highway and will face great difficulties improving their economic situation without one. But as a whole, the territory is in deep trouble if we are to believe the
the Conference Board of Canada's economic outlook from earlier this year. It calls the future 10 years down the road “grim.”
Instead of trying to score political points with the constituents back home, building highways that don't serve any great economic purpose other than making it easier for people to drive to Yellowknife to pick up furniture and groceries, MLAs should be prioritizing infrastructure projects that ensure the territory's survival, and hopefully growth.
That would include hydro development to get communities off of diesel and help avoid the pain coming from Prime Minister Trudeau's demand for a carbon tax. And building an all-season road to the diamond mines northeast of Great Slave Lake, which are already providing the economic life's blood of the territory but won't be for much longer if we can't convince them to stay longer and seek out new mines.
Some day we hope a Mackenzie Valley Highway will be built. Economic prosperity will ensure that. But the GNWT won't get there if it squanders money and opportunities on costly feel-good projects.