Thank you. Well, I feel like
we’ve just been on a big chase around the mulberry bush here, because this all started when the issue of the routing came up. We were told that even though this had gone to environmental assessment, in fact the routing could be reconsidered. There are
a lot of implications in that, and I guess it’s not probably likely.
But to the issue of the money that we’re putting into this — if this is good deal…. You know, I’m having déjà vu on the Deh Cho Bridge here. I’ll tell you why. We have to put money into something in order to see a project get off the ground. We’ve got “investors” — I say that in quotation marks — coming to the table probably, really, with nothing, except that they have control over the lands that this project is going to go over. We once again are taking all the risk. We’re taking all the risk to try and facilitate a deal to get economic and cleaner energy to diamond mines which have an undetermined lifespan.
There are a lot of things happening in the global economy right now. We don’t know how long diamonds are going to be in big demand. The forecasts are predicting that 100 million people on this planet are going to be starving soon. I don’t know what kinds of global pressures could come to bear or could affect markets for diamonds. But I just have this sixth sense that we are once again footing the bill, holding the bag, taking all the risk, and a project may or may not go ahead.
We don’t have any way to recover our costs if this project doesn’t go ahead at all. We’re putting all the investment money on the table. You know, we say, “If it goes ahead, we could recover the costs. If the diamond mines.... If we can negotiate a good deal with them....”
Like I said, I’m just having a moment here thinking about how we went down the path to the Deh Cho Bridge and all the risks that we took on that and still are taking on that.
So I have a question: if the cost to build the transmission line to the mines is undertaken — I mean, if those costs are expended — and something happens to the market, i.e. the diamond mines, who is left holding the bag, the risk, for the 690-kilometre transmission line to nowhere if there’s no diamond mine at the end of it?
Anyway, we have lots of other things to talk about here tonight, Mr. Chairman, so I don’t want to belabour this any longer. I don’t think this is maybe even the right forum to have this kind of in-depth debate about this project, but I just wanted to comment that I think there’s a lot of information that we’re not able to delve into here tonight, and I have serious concerns and questions. Thank you.