BANFF — The Tory government is already eyeing the possibility of toll roads to help pay for highway projects, Transportation Minister Wayne Drysdale confirmed after Progressive Conservative party members backed the idea at their weekend convention.

Delegates to the PC annual general meeting passed a resolution Saturday calling for the government to develop a toll road system to finance new major highways.

“We’re going to look at it,” Drysdale said in an interview.

“We’ve actually talked about it already in our caucus and in our department and stuff. So it’s something we’re looking at.”

The resolution came from Drysdale’s Grande Prairie-Wapiti riding though the minister said he did not author it himself.

Drysdale cautioned that the government is still a long way from a decision on the toll road idea and it would have to go through numerous hurdles before it was implemented.

“I’m not saying I’ve got a road picked out that tomorrow I’m going to put a toll on,” he said.

Drysdale said charging drivers to use a road would likely only apply to new routes but that would have to be determined as part of the government review.

Premier Jim Prentice has been raising a red flag over slumping oil prices that will potentially cut deep into provincial royalties.

“This is not business as usual,” he told party members in a lunchtime speech Saturday.

Later, Prentice would not answer a reporter’s question about whether the province was considering new revenue sources.

Drysdale said the toll road idea has been under discussion since before the drop in oil prices, which has seen West Texas Intermediate slide under $75-a-barrel U.S., but the decline means “it’s probably more important now.”

“We’ve got to look at different ways of doing business and paying for some of our infrastructure,” he said.

“User-pay, rather than taxing everybody.”

Tory delegates passed a number of resolutions relation to infrastructure, including calls to reinstate a bridge funding program, develop a rapid transit plan and finalize a transportation and utilities corridor between Calgary and Edmonton.

Other police prescriptions endorsed by PC members included allowing municipalities to use off-site levies for construction of public facilities to ease property tax increases. Another resolution called for the government to implement a policy around the use of medical marijuana while driving.

jwood@calgaryherald.com