Mr. Chairman, that’ll be all for now,

but I just want to say for the record that I do recognize that this eventually does become legacy infrastructure.

I hope the Minister and his staff and everyone else who’s listening recognizes that there still seems to be a lot of unknowns behind this project. The fact is that the day that these diamond mine companies close, which will come, that power will be available then.

The only fear I see here at this stage, and I’d like to think I recognized this early on.... When you see the power route go by, it goes by every sort of real populated community without building synergy. I would certainly hope that there’d at least be some investment into the thinking of linking it to other communities.

If it’s going to run by or close to places like Yellowknife, I’d certainly like to see that as part of the thinking over the long haul. When we start doing that, we can continue to expand to all our small communities on a grid. I think that will be the precipice of creating a one-rate zone throughout the Northwest Territories. As I seem to recall, they often shot down the one-rate theory because of uncommon rates based on the fact that you pay for what it costs in your region. I think this could be the avenue to look at sort of a smarter power grid throughout the North. I’d hate to think that opportunity would be lost, Mr. Chair, in that people aren’t thinking far enough down the road.

If I remember correctly, there was an amount in the range of $30 million to connect Yellowknife to the larger grid. I think the synergy, just in that alone, would start powering 60 or 70 per cent of our population. I think it would help everyone at large.

Mr. Chair, my time’s up, and I’ll leave it at that last comment. Thank you.