Thank you, Mr. Chair. I agree with
everything the Premier said. I was sitting here and I was listening. I had an idea before I came in here which way I was going to lean on this. I think I even asked my seatmate here: why are we doing this? I listened to the reasons from both sides of the House, and I thought the Members on this side of the House stated their case a little bit better than the other side. I don’t mean that in a bad way.
I agree that we have all these other projects here. I think one of the Members touched on it: they’re all specific. I mean, we know exactly where it’s going. I think the Member for Nahendeh talked about parks renewal and that he doesn’t feel like he has ownership of it. I think that’s part of our problem over here.
We’re not saying that this is not an important area, but at this time I think we have to realize, you know — and I think one of the Members from the other side said it — that you have to go look somebody in the eye. I totally agree with him. That’s one of the reasons why I don’t think this is an important use of government funds right now. I want to be able to go home and look my constituents in the eye and tell them, all 34-plus who potentially could lose their jobs: “I fought hard for your jobs. I was unable to save most of you, but by the way, we’re spending $1.5 million on parks renewal. We’re not knowing exactly where it’s going to go.” That’s one of the
reasons I look at it this way. I need to be able to go home and justify all this.
There are a lot of line items in here I don’t necessarily agree with. We can argue them line by line, but there are some, I know, where we just have to let them go through. This is really not a huge priority right now. I’m glad to see that my words are being listened to very carefully, so I’ll leave it at that.