Thank you very much.
---Laughter
...in the financing proposals. They are ideas, they aren't nailed down yet but they are ideas that have been put out there that will indeed enable Ottawa to come to the table for this project.
I asked the question a little while ago and my colleague Ms. Lee referenced the other visionary transportation projects that are before us now. One is a port and road project that would come down from the North that would, in effect, bypass the infrastructure we already have here. What would be seriously threatened if the signal that went up from this Assembly is we don't know about investing in this very significant piece of infrastructure across the Deh Cho River? So if we start rewriting another bad ending to this story, that's the signal we are going to be putting out. We are going to compromise this and my colleagues from north of Yellowknife or the North Slave region, the Tlicho, what chances are they going to get of roads that will connect to communities? We had better send a signal out to industry and the rest of Canada that we believe in ourselves, we believe in the future and this is one way of showing it.
---Applause
Mr. Speaker, I am more and more concerned about the environment conditions, climate change, that is going to erode the predictability, the security and the stability of the Mackenzie River crossing. We are facing more frequent, more surprised interruptions because of low water, because of ice conditions, combinations that are spilling, if not at least a nuisance and inconvenience, they are someday going to pose real hardship for the economy of this whole region as well as the safety of the travelling public and the crews on the Merv Hardie ferry. We may be compelled, for reasons beyond economics, to make sure there is that 24/7 connection.
Mr. Speaker, the mines are going to pay for this bridge. We are blessed to have that resource there and those
companies there that we will be able to put to work to pay for this bridge. If that bridge had been in place now with the toll structure that we know of, somewhere in the neighbourhood of $2.5 million would have been collected this winter, Mr. Speaker, $2.5 million this winter from the traffic that went up to supply the mines.