Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to thank the Minister responsible for Finance for his opening comments. I am happy with the detail provided. I am also excited to actually get into the detail as we move forward, so I will keep my comments short.
The $648 million over the two years, $222 million this year, I think that’s great. I think now, given the economic realities, is this time for this government to be investing in infrastructure to try to kick-start some work in the Territories. But $648 million is a lot of money and, to be quite honest, I am a little worried about our capacity to actually get these projects done. I would like some reassurances from the Minister that we can actually get this amount of work done in the best interest of the people of the Northwest Territories. It is pretty ambitious.
Just as another note, I am quite happy to see the $119 million going into deferred maintenance. I mean, for us to get so far behind on deferred maintenance is very unfortunate and I think this is a giant step on moving forward to address some of that $470 million we have in deferred maintenance. Hopefully we will be able to get more and more over time.
So I look forward to getting into detail and if we could get some assurances on how we actually hope to accomplish the $648 million over two years, that would be great. Thank you.