Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you, colleagues. This is an issue that has garnered much discussion amongst Members of this House over the past week and a half since we've been back in the House, Mr. Speaker, and I want to be clear, and state again for the record, that in no way am I opposed to a bridge across the Mackenzie River at Fort Providence. That's not the onus of this motion. The onus of this motion, Mr. Speaker, is the fact that the project has changed. It has changed tremendously. It has gone from a self-financing model five years ago to one that will now need an additional at least $2 million more in government funds on a yearly basis to proceed.

This motion is about transparency, Mr. Speaker. It's about accountability; it's about moving things forward by working together, and I do have some concerns on how exactly the bridge project jumped the queue for priorities of the government. It's interesting how that happens when we've never had a debate in this House in the four years I've been here on what are the big infrastructure priorities here. We've never had the debate. There are so many competing interests out there, like the Mackenzie Valley highway, chipsealing of Highway No. 5, the road to gravel source 177 near Tuk, the extension of Highway No. 4 to Gordon Lake, the Tuk-Inuvik highway. There are a number of competing priorities out there. There are a number of competing priorities out there, Mr. Speaker. Why the urgency to move this forward right now?

Mr. Speaker, I'll be clear on this: All along, in the three and a half years, that loan guarantee to the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation has been increased four or five times. Every time the government would come back to Regular Members saying we've got to get some federal money to get this bridge to go ahead, there has to be federal money. So, Mr. Speaker, it was very surprising when the Premier announced in his sessional statement that the bridge was going to go ahead.