[5] Upon campaigning during the 2011 election, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that it was his intention to complete the 138 km (86 mi)[6] highway extension to Tuktoyaktuk.

The highway was seen as both a symbolic effort to link Canada's coastlines by road, and an aid in Arctic sovereignty and access to natural resources.

The first three years of the project saw crews working 24 hours per day, in the extreme cold and high winds of the arctic winter.

[14][15] Since the 1980s, there has been a reduction in oil and gas exploration in the region which is serviced by the highway, specifically a 2016 moratorium on drilling in the Canadian Arctic.

[7] The road begins at the end of the Dempster Highway in Inuvik, Northwest Territories and continues for 138 km (86 mi) north towards Tuktoyaktuk, a coastal community on the Arctic Ocean.