You think it’s easy to make priorities?

Two Ministers, two – um, nuanced answers to hard questioning from local radio about the “hard surfacing” of the Trans-Labrador Highway in southern Labrador:

We’re just in the process of completing 280 kilometres construction, new road construction, between Cartwright Junction and Happy Valley-Goose Bay. We’ve committed to, y’know, in excess of 500 kilometres of hard surfacing between Happy Valley-Goose Bay and Labrador City. When you combine that with the other infrastructure issues that we have in the province, and road upgrading, and what have you, there’s only so much that, y’know, for one, our engineering department, is able to handle. There’s only a certain amount that you’re able to do from a construction perspective in the run of a season. Y’know I think that all indications are that we’re very close to maxing out on what we can do from a road constructionupgradingresurfacing perspective in the province as a whole. And we need to work on the projects that we’ve identified as priorities right now, and as they get done, we move on to the next ones on the list. It’s just really as simple as that. And you have to bear in mind what might be your fiscal capacity, and, y’know, this year we, y’know, we were lookin’ at a fairly significa— the probability of a fairly significant deficit. Only time will tell where that will come in. We have two big big highway projects under way in Labrador right now, and we want to see those through before we start on any new ones.

Trevor Taylor, CBC Labrador Morning, July 30th

I can tell you, that this project here is the number one project with the Department of Transportation and Works for the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, and it will continue into the future, until the 1125 kilometres between Red Bay and Labrador West is completed… I mean hard-surfacing, right from one end to the other. We have waited too long.

John Hickey, CBC Labrador Morning, July 22nd.