My hon. friend says there is no intention, they do not have a plan.
I would like to shift gears to another problem in my riding and that is the deterioration of the national highway system. Members opposite beat their breasts about our national obligations to bind this nation together. However, when we start talking about the national highway system, they retreat behind spurious claims that highways are solely a provincial responsibility. That is a red herring. Most highways are provincial responsibilities but the national highway system is a joint federal-provincial responsibility. It is national and I will provide a dictionary for any Liberal member who does not know what a national highway system is.
In my riding of Swift Current-Maple Creek-Assiniboia, a 113 kilometre stretch of the wonderful Trans-Canada highway from Gull Lake to the Alberta border is winding and hilly. It has not been twinned. Since 1979 that short stretch of road has claimed 31 lives. There has not been a year when someone has not been killed on that little stretch of road. There have been more than 350 personal injuries.
I live very close to that highway. I never, unless I have no choice in the matter whatsoever, drive it in bad weather or at night because it is a death trap.
This morning the minister of agriculture made reference to his claim that the province of Saskatchewan has never asked to have that particular piece of highway twinned. I presume he also meant the section from Indian Head to the Manitoba border. That is nonsense.
In the fall of 1994 the department of highways of Saskatchewan had its money on the table to pay its share of the $35 million cost of twinning that one little section of highway in my riding and the federal government, after saying it would do it, reneged on its promise. What else is new?
Then the minister of agriculture decided that we should debate Saskatchewan highway conditions, not the national system, but Saskatchewan. He said that no highway work had been done in Saskatchewan since the Liberal government of Ross Thatcher 25 years ago. I wonder if he ever heard the expression, Thatcher's patchers, which is how they referred to the Saskatchewan department of highways 25 years ago.
Yesterday's committee report confirmed what Canadians already know: the Trans-Canada highway system is substandard. The government collects billions of dollars in fuel taxes and yet last year it could only find $292 million for the entire national highway system from sea yea unto shining sea. This is chippy. This is unacceptable.