Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think it’s important to advance these types of projects, and certainly the Mackenzie Valley Highway would benefit the North and would certainly make a significant number of opportunities feasible. In Canada there’s a history of projects that have been built to open up different regions of the country and I see no reason why this couldn’t happen here in the Northwest Territories as well.

This morning I mentioned in my Minister’s statement that the Minister’s Advisory Panel met and we talked about a number of issues, economic and otherwise, and one of the questions I posed to the panel members was what were the top issues for the Northwest Territories. One of the top issues that the Members agreed upon was the importance of a Mackenzie Valley Highway, so I thought it was very timely to have this motion brought forward. They also talked about what do we have to do to get Ottawa’s attention. There have been a number of attempts to do...We had a Business Advisory Council and we all packed up and went to Ottawa on many occasions. I think it became very apparent that in order to make any progress we had to have a very focused message, we had to be very strategic and I think that this will have to occur again.

As far as the benefits of building a Mackenzie Valley Highway, I go back to growing up in Fort Providence. I remember my older brother worked on the Mackenzie Highway which opened up Fort Providence, Behchoko, Yellowknife, and certainly we benefited from the highway. I remember groups of workers from Fort Providence going off to work on Hire North projects for many years, and as the Member from Nahendeh indicated, they developed

a lot of capacity and skills and I expect the same thing would happen on a Mackenzie Highway.

I think all of the Members talked about the benefits from the highway. Tourism, obviously, will benefit. I know the tourists that come up here say they don’t like travelling the same road twice, not only in coming up to Yellowknife but also going up to Inuvik. Certainly it would increase the number of visitors. I mentioned oil and gas. Several Members have talked about how expensive it is to drill or develop any oil and gas opportunities. Certainly a highway would reduce the cost. Of course, the cost of living. Another area is there are a significant number of businesses that have invested heavily in equipment and certainly if we could find a way to even start taking bite-size portions to start building the highway sooner rather than later, that could benefit some of the local businesses and entrepreneurs.

I also lived in Norman Wells for a couple years so I’m familiar with the isolation that some of the Members talked about when the only way you could get in is by plane and there’s no other way. Certainly if you can drive, that would certainly improve the attractiveness of the communities.

I’ve had a number of meetings with MAC, the Mackenzie Aboriginal Corporation, and they have undertaken work on their own whereby they did an analysis of the cost of not constructing the Mackenzie Valley Highway. How much would it cost? How much money are we losing by not having the Mackenzie Valley Highway? So they’ve concluded a study. I don’t have the study here and I don’t have the information, but I know that every year the longer we wait it’s costing money. So I’ll be supporting the motion.