MR. GRAHAM STEELE: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to take advantage of this unusual opportunity in the House to take 15 minutes to talk about my constituency, because it is the only time in the legislative session when I can talk on the record about certain things that are important to the people who sent me here.

Mr. Speaker, one of the more pressing issues in my constituency at the moment is the abandonment by CN Rail of a spur line that runs through my constituency - indeed, runs essentially from one end to the other, and it goes through some fairly heavily populated residential areas. The future of this line is very important to the people of Halifax Fairview. There are a number of theoretically possible uses, but I think there is a very strong consensus in the community that the best use of this soon-to-be-abandoned rail line is conversion to a recreational trail. In fact, this is an astonishing opportunity to build, easily, recreation infrastructure into the western suburbs of HRM, because if this rail line becomes a recreational trail it will connect directly to hundreds of miles of Rails-to-Trails projects that go around the southern part of the province. It will bring an off-road, recreational trail right into the heart of the City of Halifax, right on Joseph Howe Drive where it joins the

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Bicentennial Highway, out to around the southern part of the province. It is an amazing opportunity and it would be a tragedy if we let this opportunity slip through our fingers.

Mr. Speaker, under the law that governs the abandonment of rail lines, each level of government has, essentially, a right of first refusal. The federal government said that they were not interested, the provincial government said they were not interested, so really it is up to the city now as to the future of the line. CN is a private corporation, they don't give these things away, they sell them. The asking price is several million dollars. The city is now negotiating with CN, discussing with CN, trying to reach a price that's acceptable to both. Although the province has said that they do not wish to own this line, the province has an important role in assisting the city in making this dream a reality.

[8:30 a.m.]

When I say a dream, I know that there is enormous support in the community that I represent to convert this line to a recreational trail. There was an on-line petition that attracted, very quickly, close to 1,500 signatures. Mr. Speaker, there is widespread support throughout Fairview, Fairmount and Armdale, the people who would most directly benefit. There is some opposition of course, as there is to any project. The people who live directly on the line are concerned about the implications of having a recreational trail, but I think that those objections or concerns, those anxieties, can be overcome. So I urge the provincial government, in particular led by the Minister of Health Promotion and Protection, to work with the city to do everything the province can in order to make this a reality. This kind of recreational opportunity doesn't come along very often and it would be a very great shame to let it slip by.

Speaking of recreation, let me turn for a moment then to the need for more recreational facilities in the community I represent, or to be more precise in the general area. I think everybody agrees that whatever will be built, will actually be built in Halifax Clayton Park. There is not a suitable site within the area that I represent to build a proper recreational facility. Mr. Speaker, on the Mainland Common is where the facility would go. Now there has been a bit of consternation and heartache in the community about the location of this facility, the size of this facility, but I think the one thing that everybody involved can agree on is that this very large and growing community is badly underserved by the existing recreational facilities.

Again, this is not something that one level of government is going to be able to do on its own. Again, it is the municipality taking the lead, but they do need the support of the provincial government, they do need the support of the federal government. I urge, in particular the Minister of Health Promotion and Protection, who I am aware is fully up to date on all the issues and concerns of the area, to do whatever the government can to make sure that this large and growing community receives recreational facilities commensurate with the size of the population.

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Mr. Speaker, let me turn then to a road issue. Now I don't have much way of provincial roads in my constituency. The Minister of Transportation generally likes to deal with me because I have very few complaints. I have two short stretches of provincial highway, both of which are in generally good condition, however, there is one intersection that causes a great deal of concern to nearby residents. This is along the stretch of highway known as Northwest Arm Drive.

Now when Northwest Arm Drive was built, it was really out in the middle of nowhere, but over the past number of years, some large, high-density, residential developments have been built right along the side of the road. It has become essentially a residential collector road. Many people are walking, biking, jogging, along the road. It's built as a highway but it's really no different in some ways than any other residential street.

So this is creating some very serious traffic problems for which the province is responsible because it is a provincial highway. There is an intersection leading into the Stoneridge Subdivision, Mr. Speaker, which has been the site of at least one fatality, a number of very serious collisions and a whole lot of near misses. It is important that everything be done to make this intersection safe. The department itself acknowledges that it's a dangerous intersection. The statistics prove that it's a dangerous intersection and after several years of trying, of lobbying by local residents, the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal last year finally did undertake some work to improve the safety of the intersection.

However, that work was completed several months ago, but the changes are still not operational. For example, the new turn signals are still covered, Mr. Speaker, and just last week I received an e-mail from a concerned local resident asking when are these changes actually going to be made operational? I was planning on raising this issue today . . .

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please. The chatter is getting a little loud.

The honourable member for Halifax Fairview.

MR. STEELE: Mr. Speaker, after years of trying to get the changes made, some changes were made but haven't been actually made operational. So what you have is a brand new set of streetlights that are covered over and have been now for several months. Fortunately, just yesterday, the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal sent out an e-mail to me and to the concerned residents saying in a couple of weeks it ought to be operational.

Mr. Speaker, one of the difficulties I've always had is the lack of communication with local residents. If I wasn't communicating with the residents and digging for information and then passing it along to local residents, they would have no information at all. The Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal does not send one bit of

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information to people living in the local area saying what they're doing, why they're doing it, why they're not doing other things that residents have asked for, or when the residents can expect the changes to be operational. The local residents just have to guess and I have to work with them to try to get information. I really do think the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal could do more, especially in heavily populated areas like this one, to inform the local residents of what's going on.

So we'll watch, Mr. Speaker. After waiting this long, we'll wait a couple more weeks hoping that the changes that have been made will be made operational but more needs to be done. More needs to be done. There's still a very dangerous turning lane where people leaving the neighbourhood and going onto this provincial highway have only a few feet to accelerate before they have to join traffic coming around a nearby corner at very high speed. It is not safe. It needs to change but so far the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal has declined to do any work in that regard.

Speaking of speed, Mr. Speaker, as I have gone around my constituency for the last seven years knocking on doors, talking to people and finding out what their concerns are, you would think that the number one concern in my constituency would be health care or education, or things of that sort that we hear about all the time but, in fact, the number one concern that people consistently have raised with me is speeding and traffic. Everybody believes that cars go too fast on residential streets. Every single street has a speeding problem.

So the difficulty was knowing what to do about it and recently, Mr. Speaker, a program that started in Australia came to my attention. It's called the Pace Car Program. Here in Nova Scotia, it's sponsored by the Insurance Bureau of Canada and administered by the Ecology Action Centre under contract to the Insurance Bureau of Canada. The idea of this program is to try to slow people down. The idea is that if you get a critical mass of people who all pledge to obey all traffic laws and not to drive over the speed limit, that will have the effect of slowing down traffic generally in a neighbourhood.

So, Mr. Speaker, I have helped to sponsor the launching of that project in the Fairview community, which is built on a steep hill and cars go at incredible speeds up and down the hills of Fairview, and I would like to thank the people of Fairview for their wonderful response. So far we have 70 people signed up to drive pace cars, to put decals on the cars, showing they're committed to the program. So if you end up behind one of these cars who's going the speed limit, you know they're committed to going the speed limit and it's a signal to everybody that people in the neighbourhood care about the speed of traffic. They want themselves and their families to be safe. It's something practical the people can do to try to slow down traffic in their neighbourhood.

If it works in Fairview, we will roll it out more broadly to other neighbourhoods, but it's the first time in Nova Scotia, we're told, where this effort has been tried on a

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neighbourhood-wide basis. Previous efforts have been done on a school basis only, which works up to a point, but this is one where we've tried to reach out to an entire neighbourhood in order to try and slow down traffic, which is the number one issue that people have raised with me as I've gone around canvassing in my constituency over the past seven years.

There is one more issue that I would like to raise and I'm sorry to have to raise it again. I've been raising it for seven years and it's still not solved and that is the provincial park that is in my constituency. It's called Long Lake Provincial Park. It was declared a park 25 years ago and during that time, it has sat without a development plan. The Department of Natural Resources actually discourages people from going into the park because there are no facilities, there's no management, there's no money for a management plan.

Despite that, the area around the edges of the park, particularly the eastern edge of the park, is burgeoning. A lot of people are in the park and a few people have made the commitment to work with the Department of Natural Resources to develop a management plan, but they're tired out because they've put their heart and soul into it and nothing happens.

I've been raising this issue in this House for seven years and still there is no management plan for Long Lake Provincial Park. It's a jewel on the edge of the city, it's an enormous, wonderful, natural area. I've gone kayaking in the lake, I've gone for extended walks in the lake, it's full of animal life and bird life and people deserve to be able to take advantage of that park. But, it still sits, after all these years, with no management plan.

So, once again, I ask the government and I ask the Department of Natural Resources, to please help the citizens develop a management plan so that everybody can benefit from that jewel of a park in our midst. Thank you.