MR. GRAHAM STEELE: Mr. Speaker, it's a privilege to rise at this point to do something which is unusual in the House, that is, to have the opportunity to speak about any subject really that happens to be on our mind. What I would like to do is, I would like to use my 15 minutes to get on the record a number of issues that are important to the people who live in my constituency.

Mr. Speaker, Cowie Hill is a very fine neighbourhood of modest homes, and one of the things that adds to the beauty of Cowie Hill, apart from the glorious views out over the Northwest Arm and over to the Halifax Peninsula, is the fact that all the electrical wiring in Cowie Hill is underground, which adds a very fine aesthetic quality to that neighbourhood.

Now, this neighbourhood of modest homes - very hard-working people - is under threat from Nova Scotia Power, because the underground electrical system is due for a replacement and Nova Scotia Power has indicated that they will not replace the wires underground. The only thing Nova Scotia Power will pay for is to take the underground wiring and put it above ground. In other words, destroy the aesthetic quality of the neighbourhood, to destroy one of the features that makes Cowie Hill what it is.

Nova Scotia Power says if the residents want to continue with underground wiring, they're going to have to pay for it. The cost estimates range anywhere from $2 million to $3 million. When you divide it between all the homes in Cowie Hill - 400-some homes - it adds up to a substantial amount of money, which very few of the homeowners are going to be able to afford. Some of the residents representing all the homeowners have filed a complaint to the Utility and Review Board. Well over a year ago the Utility and Review Board scheduled a hearing in order to hear the complaints to determine who will have to pay for the replacement of the underground wiring.

I'm pleased to say the Halifax Regional Municipality has indicated their intention to get involved before the Utility and Review Board on behalf of the residents of Cowie Hill. It is time that the Province of Nova Scotia did the same thing. I hope to have the opportunity next week to address this question to the Minister of Energy during Question Period. The good residents of Cowie Hill whom I am pleased to represent, could well use the support of the province in their fight for underground wiring.

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During Hurricane Juan, the power in Cowie Hill was only out for an hour or two when other parts of my constituency had the power out for three, four, five days - some for as long as two weeks.

This issue deserves to be resolved in the favour of the homeowners of Cowie Hill and it's something I'm going to be working on with this government to get them involved the way the city government has been.

I'm pleased that my constituency of Halifax Fairview includes one-third of Long Lake Provincial Park, a very beautiful wilderness park which I share with the member for Halifax Atlantic and the member for Timberlea-Prospect. It so happens the part of that park that I represent is by far the most travelled part of the park. As development has occurred along the western edge of my constituency, more and more people are living closer and closer to the park and, of course, use of the park has gone up.

That has created a problem because the park is currently without a management plan. Although it was declared as a provincial park in the mid-1980s, the park has never had a management plan. In fact, the Department of Natural Resources actually discourages use of the park because there are no trails, there is no way without a management plan to protect and promote the park adequately. It leads to the dilemma that hundreds, thousands of people use the park, but the Department of Natural Resources doesn't want them to.

This problem was only exacerbated after Hurricane Juan because as there was throughout much of the rest of Halifax Regional Municipality, many trees came down in the park. Ever since then, the park has been officially closed. Hurricane Juan was in the Fall of 2003 and the park has been officially closed since then. But, hundreds - if not thousands - of people continue to use the park and it is not at all clear what the Department of Natural Resources' attitude towards this use is.

For heaven's sake, it is a wilderness park. People don't expect groomed trails, they don't expect things to be perfect. It's not unknown for people to have to walk over and around logs that have fallen across the trail naturally and it's very hard to understand the attitude of the Department of Natural Resources. They appear to want this wilderness park to be perfect before they allow anybody in. Now, Mr. Speaker, when this was in the news last year, the departmental spokesperson was quoted saying that the signs are really only up to discourage people from entering, that it's not the official position of the department that people shouldn't actually go into the park. They simply want to send a signal that they are not assuming any liability for any injuries that people may suffer.

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[2:00 p.m.]

Mr. Speaker, it is time, it is long past time, that the status of Long Lake Provincial Park was clarified. The people in the area use it, they love it, it's a beautiful park, apart from Point Pleasant Park, it is the closest wilderness park to the downtown core of Halifax. It is a wonderful asset, a wonderful resource. I am pleased that it is, at least, partly in my constituency. The Department of Natural Resources needs to do more to clarify its status, and clarify it so the park can, again, be the duo it could be.

Mr. Speaker, in my constituency there is a lake called Chocolate Lake that has existed for a very long time. A little known fact about the lake is that it's not a natural lake, but in fact, a lake created by quarrying that happened over the past 200 years. It's been there for a very long time, it has seen many industrial facilities around its edges, now, it's entirely residential apart from one hotel property on the shores of the lake. One of the things many people assume is that the name Chocolate Lake comes from the colour of the water. Almost everybody I talk to just assumes that's why they call it Chocolate Lake. As a matter of fact, Mr. Speaker, the reason it's called Chocolate Lake is because there used to be a Chocolate Factory on it's shores back in the 19^th Century. That factory is long since gone but the name has stuck.

There is, I'm very pleased to say, a new and very active community association. People who live in the area that drains into Chocolate Lake have formed a Chocolate Lake Community Association under the vary able leadership of Dr. Anna-Marie Hatcher and Mr. Graham Reed. This association has managed to mobilize the community to care for the lake, to look after it. One of the things they're very concerned about is runoff from the Fairmount Ridge development. I've spoken in this house before about Fairmount Ridge, which was a contaminated site, for over 40 years, there was indiscriminate dumping of industrial waste on the property that is now home to Fairmount Ridge. Now the developer had a plan, which was approved by the Department of Environment for the cleanup of that site. So that's not really the problem, I'm not suggesting that there is a problem. Where they may be a problem, is runoff from the site because that runoff will run downhill under St. Margaret's Bay Rd. and into Chocolate Lake. It is not clear to the residents of the watershed area, that the Department of Environment and Labour is adequately monitoring the environmental impacts that have resulted from the development of that site.

The Department of Environment and Labour must do more to assure residents that there will be no adverse impact, especially that there will be no long-term adverse impact in Chocolate Lake, which has been used for many years. Going back decades and longer, it has been used as a Summer recreational area for swimmers. Many people use that lake for swimming and they need to be assured that there are no toxic runoffs posed by the Fairmount Ridge development. The Department of Environment and Labour, unfortunately, seems to have taken the view that they do not owe it to anybody to explain what's going on in that site. The only reason the residents of that area know what's going on is because over the past

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several years, I have relentlessly pursued this through Freedom of Information and otherwise. Personally, Mr. Speaker, I think it is a shame that the only way that the residents know about the environmental impact of a development in their neighbourhood is because their MLA has to go through the Freedom of Information process to get the information and distribute it. The Department of Environment and Labour can do better and must do better.

Mr. Speaker, in my constituency of Halifax Fairview, there is very little provincial highway. I can't say that I'm sorry about that because when I talk to other members of this house, especially the rural members, the number one issue they tell me, that their constituents raise with them, is the state of our roads. I'm pleased on the one hand that that's not the major issue my constituents bring to me. I am sorry to say that the number one issue by far, that my constituents bring to me is problems in the Department of Community Services, but we'll leave that for another day.

One provincial highway that is in my constituency is Northwest Arm Drive and, Mr. Speaker, it does pose some problems for the residents. It was built as a high speed highway. It is a very wide divided highway that encourages people to travel at high speeds and they do. The posted speed limit is 80, but many of the cars travel at higher speeds than that. The difficulty is that all the new development in that area has occurred along the east side of Northwest Arm Drive so that road has essentially become a commuter road where people are turning in and out of subdivisions and the two don't mix. You can't have people moving at slow speeds turning into and out of their subdivisions on a high speed highway. It simply doesn't work.

Mr. Speaker, as I raised in Question Period recently, the intersection of Walter Havill Drive and Northwest Arm Drive is the most dangerous intersection in the entire central region. That's not just me saying that, that's the staff of the Department of Transportation and Public Works. The accident rate at that intersection is double the provincial average and the staff in the central region know of no other intersection with a higher accident rate. This is an intersection that was only built a few years ago so clearly there have to be some questions about how an intersection could be built with such design flaws.

With the help of one very active resident, a gentleman by the name of Jim Connolly, we have doggedly been pursuing the department to acknowledge the problems at that intersection and indeed along the length of Northwest Arm Drive. We believe that we have convinced the Department of Transportation and Public Works' staff that this is a priority, that they have to fix that road, they have to fix that intersection, Mr. Speaker, because the residents of my constituency deserve to be able to turn into and out of their neighbourhood without fearing that they're going to be in a collision and somebody is going to get hurt. It's going to happen sooner or later. Something needs to be done quickly and what we need to find out during the estimates debate is whether in fact the department's own recommendation that this be a priority item to be fixed has been funded in this year's budget. It is very important that the Department of Transportation and Public Works address this issue.

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Mr. Speaker, in my constituency of Halifax Fairview there is a street called School Avenue. It is closer to a major highway than any other street in the entire central region and they have had an ongoing problem with jake brakes as trucks use their noisy engine brakes to go down the hill and I'm pleased to say that from the very time that I was elected four years ago, I've been working on this and with the assistance of the Minister of Transportation and Public Works, slowly, a bit at a time, we have been working on solving this problem. Just today, not an hour ago, the Minister of Transportation and Public Works gave me a copy of the final noise study on the remediation efforts that have been made to date, but more needs to be done. Those people, the people of Fairview, if they're going to live next to a highway, deserve to have the noise levels as low as they can possibly be.

Mr. Speaker, I've had an opportunity to address some of the issues in my constituency. Thank you very much for the time.