My question is to the Premier. The Auditor General revealed last week that $158 million was diverted from highway improvements on Highway 17 and Highway 11 in northern Ontario. I want to know why.

I want to see improvements to our highways. I want to see this investment of $158 million return to those highways in northern Ontario. I want to see safe roads. I want to see the member from Mushkegowuk’s bill actually supported by this government, to bring the highway services down to the eight-hour standard, to make our roads safer on our highways in northern Ontario. That’s what I want to see on our highways.

I’m asking this government: Are you prepared to make the investments that were initiated for northern Ontario return so that we could have safe highways, as everybody else deserves in this province?

Well, the Ministry of Transportation was very clear that the projects that were identified in the Auditor General’s report as deferred have actually all moved forward, either in the planning stages or due diligence stages or the construction stages. The member opposite knows very well that our government has been committed to road safety and construction in northern Ontario.

We’re moving forward the twinning of Highway 17 between the Manitoba border and Kenora. We’ve been working on building 14 new rest stops and rehabilitating 10 rest stops to make sure that we can provide safety for our drivers as they’re going along our northern roads. And we’re moving forward with an innovative new highway pilot called the “2+1” project—a project that came from the Northern Transportation Task Force and was recommended by people who live and drive in the north and who take road safety there so seriously.

We are very proud of the record that we have on keeping our northern roads safe and on rehabilitating and building our highways there, and we’re going to continue to do that.

Our government is committed to building in the north, and we’re committed to road safety in the north. That’s why we brought forward a completely new standard for highway and winter maintenance, a 12-hours-to-bare-pavement standard, the best and highest standard anywhere in Canada. We have made significant investments in equipment, we’re bringing innovative, new solutions to keeping our roads safe, and we’re going to continue to work to find the best standards and to do the best we can by the people in the north.