Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I put a lot of thought behind this. You know, we struggle with the context of supporting our colleagues and going our own way. It’s always quite impressive when we work hard together and come to a common front. I
guess I’m struggling with this one because of the issue of where we get the best value for dollars.
I’m not sure, if we lease, if we get the best value per dollar. I like the proposal presented, as one of my colleagues, Mr. Krutko, had pointed out, where if the Gwich’in build a building and lease it back to the GNWT, we get it for a dollar at the end. That’s typically the only type of project I support that we lease, where we end up with the project in the end. I’m not too comfortable with what I would sometimes define as leases for life, because I don’t think that’s good value in communities.
When we get to a market community, the challenge then becomes whether the market is responding to the government’s needs. In this particular case I think we’re out there in the public enough spending dollars.
I also ask myself, in a time when money’s tight, if it costs us money to do something, is it good value for money too? In this particular case sometimes the hard choice is spending money we may be short on, but it’s the best choice over the long haul. As I often cite, bread and butter economics is sort of my principle of how I like to do business. We may not be flush with cash, but it’s the right choice by building this building over the long haul.
I want to compliment the work brought forward by my colleagues Mr. Krutko and Mrs. Groenewegen, who’ve worked hard on this project to educate Members, as well as the staff who worked hard to give us a perspective to think about. I don’t vote against their motion because I want to vote against their motion; I’m voting because I think the present value for this project is in its current form.
Did it run the gauntlet like the rest of them? Probably not, but sometimes we have to respond and make decisions. It’s easier to sit here sometimes and go neg, as they say, on government by saying, “You didn’t listen; you didn’t talk to us enough,” or those types of things. Sometimes a challenging environment in politics is to make the right decision under certain expectation of criticism and scrutiny, yet still make the right decision. I think the right decision here was to make this one, and the decision was to go ahead with this building. I know it’s not easy to run the gauntlet, as this was maybe a short planning session, not through the business plans as it normally would be. The right choice in my mind is: yes, we’re tight for cash, but this is probably the best process.
I can’t speak to my personal experience with the health issues of some of our assets. I don’t know if I would make sure people knew about that too much, if that was the case. I would quietly try to fix that. That said, we have to be responsible with our assets, and if our assets aren’t living up to a
reasonable standard, I would hope that we would proceed safely for employees.
Mr. Chair, I really have a difficult time abstaining. I thought about that all day today, actually, about should I abstain. To my knowledge, in starting my ninth year in politics, I think I’ve only abstained once. I’d like to be able to finish my political career, whenever that comes, by saying I only did abstain once. I don’t really like it; I don’t like the use of it. So in this particular case, I’ll be voting against the motion, although I understand how my colleagues feel.