Thank you, Chair.
Thank you very much to our witnesses today. Mayor Redfern, thank you for your presentation. Elder Kemp, thank you for joining us here today to talk about your work, both the work that you've done for many years and the work that needs to be done going forward, and for your clear recommendations to our committee. I certainly appreciate that.
As somebody who's been on the winter road to Berens River many times, I can only imagine what a huge difference the new all-weather road has made. I certainly appreciate the various points you raised, and most importantly, the question of life and death, as you pointed out. Nobody can deny that when you hear something like, “There have been no suicides since the road was open or even leading up to its opening”, I think it's very clear why we need to be building all-weather roads in northeastern Manitoba.
I'm wondering if you might also reflect on how critical it is to build this all-weather road system when it comes to issues like forest fires. This summer, we dealt of course with the very stressful situation in Little Grand Rapids, another community that was supposed to be part of the all-weather road system, where people were truly abandoned until the last minute, when the army was finally able to come in. It was made very clear to me by the leadership that if there had been an all-weather road, people could have left in their own time. Obviously, we'd still need an emergency evacuation plan, but access to a road would have made a big difference.
I think these are realities that anybody living in an urban centre or a rural community that's connected by road cannot understand.
Could you speak a bit to how it would make a difference on that front as well?