Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre made a stop in Yellowknife on Sunday, Sept. 8, where he told SA国际影视传媒 he is "certainly open" to a Mackenzie Valley Highway from the southern NWT to the Beaufort Delta.
"I want to see a proposal on my desk, day one, with the full cost, the full plan, and the full timeline."
Poilievre's comments on the Mackenzie Valley Highway came following a rally at the Explorer Hotel in Yellowknife, where he was introduced to a crowd of about two hundred people by Western Arctic Conservative candidate Kim Fairman. The weekend visit was the first to the territory by Poilievre since becoming leader of the Conservative Party in the fall of 2022.
Earlier this month, Frank Pope, mayor of Norman Wells, said he is thinking of declaring a state of emergency due to the high cost of living. It's a cost that could be reduced thanks to the highway SA国际影视传媒� a proposed two-lane gravel route that would connect the community and others in the Sahtu region to the rest of Canada, year-round.
It's also a big project, costing upwards of a billion dollars. Despite the splurge in federal spending it would cost, Poilievre said he'd want all the details hammered out, and would considering building the road.
Norman Wells also gets typically resupplied thanks to ice roads in the winter, and by barge in the summer. Warming winters have shortened the ice road's life span, however. This summer, the water levels in the Mackenzie River fell low enough that not a single barge could make the trip too.
The NWT is also currently experiencing record low water levels, although water levels on Great Slave Lake were the highest on record from 2020 to 2022, according to to the Department pf Environment and Climate Change.
Poilievre said this country needs to invest in what he called climate adaptation.
"The climate is adjusting and changing and we need to ensure that we have protection against flooding, but also resources to prevent and extinguish forest fires before they devastate entire communities. We need a whole plan to protect against these unusual weather events."
That plan, said Poilievre, includes better forest management, using Alberta's lack of planning, and in particular what it meant for Jasper, as an example not to follow.
Poilievre added that having more firefighting resources like water bombers, or thinning out dry and dead wood as part of his plan. He did not specifically talk about what he would do to stabilize water levels specifically though.
Poilievre did however give an enthusiastic "yes," when asked if he'd support adding nuclear power in the NWT, like building small modular reactors (SMR).
"Now, you have to do the math to ensure that the numbers add up, but we need base load, emissions free, targeted energy. And the thing with small modular reactors, unlike their bigger, can-do counterparts is that you can bring in a tactical supply that is big enough just for a small community or industrial site."
By no means are these cheap projects. In 2023, the Government of Canada approved up to $74 million in federal funding for SMR development in Saskatchewan. And Poilievre is no stranger to criticize government spending. Still, people will have to get energy somehow, said the leader of the opposition.
"One way or the other, there's going to have to be a price to pay to build, whether it's dams, or to supply diesel generators or natural gas stations, or nuclear. So we should sit down and do the math but we can't have our northern communities go without electricity."
Poilievre added that energy products pay for themselves, typically. "People have their power bill and they pay for it."
He said that government is too slow at the moment when it comes to grant permits and add costs to these projects. "We need to get the government bureaucracy out of the way."
Leader of the NDP, Jagmeet Singh, was in Yellowknife in August. Poilievre showed up about a month later. There's nothing confirmed as to when or if Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will stop by Yellowknife next.
