By Chelsea Laskowski

First Nation launching into action for Wollaston Lake road

Dec 13, 2013 | 4:57 PM

On Friday, leadership from Hatchet Lake Denesuline First Nation came together, saying a recent University of Saskatchewan report supports their call for a road to Wollaston Lake.

Right now, the only way people travel to Wollaston Lake area is by barge in the summer, ice road in the winter, or plane.

The University of Saskatchewan report, by anthropology researchers Julia Scharbach and James Waldram, looked at a June 2011 wildfire in the Wollaston Lake area.

The major wildfire forced evacuation of the 1,300 people in the area. The ice road had melted too much for people to travel by land, but not enough for the barge to transport people out of the community. They had to be flown out. 

This isn’t the first time the community pointed out how the lack of an all-season road affected them during the fire. 

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People in the north have been lobbying the province to build an all-season road for decades, said Chief Bart Tsannie.

However, so far those efforts haven’t resulted in 110 kilometres of gravel road to connect the community and industry to the rest of the province’s roads.

Using the report as a launching point, Tsannie, Vice-Chief Joseph Tsannie, and consultant Alex Maurice discussed how Hatchet Lake Denesuline First Nation is getting serious about changing that.

In November, Maurice said he travelled to North Battleford to speak to cabinet minister Bill Boyd at a Saskatchewan Party regional meeting.

“I knew they were openly expressing revisiting the P3 concept and this is exactly what Hatchet Lake is working on, a P3 concept for a road into Wollaston Lake. So I drove into North Battleford from Beauval. I had a positive meeting with minister Boyd. It was an encouraging meeting,” Maurice said.

The idea the three men are proposing is called a ‘reverse P3 concept,’ he explained.

This entails a general contractor who will be tasked with accessing funding of up to $110 million to build the road.

This loan, accessed by the general contractor, will be paid back through funding from industry, the province, P3 Canada, and the federal government’s aboriginal affairs, Maurice explained.

This will take place over 25 to 30 years through legal agreements with those partners.

There are numerous reasons to approach the funding in this way, he said. It means that the repayment of the $110 million plus interest won’t land on just the province.

“It creates less of a financial or tax burden to the tax dollars in Saskatchewan, it’s less of a requirement for provincial funding. The road gets built, Aboriginal Affairs will come across it, same with other federal departments, as well as industry will be required to contribute to paying off that loan,” Maurice said.

Before they can move forward with the contract, they need to get approval from a band council resolution and create a memorandum of understanding with the contractor, which has already been selected.

The next step to talk funding is to meet with the board of SaskBuilds, he explained.

Leadership in the First Nation will attend the meeting in Regina in the new year.

Planning so far in advance is necessary because it’s a 14-hour drive from the north to Regina, he said.

One sign of cooperation from northern industry is already there. Cameco has agreed to cover some of the travel costs for the Hatchet Lake’s leadership at that meeting.

claskowski@panow.com

On Twitter: @chelsealaskowsk