Mr. Chairman, points of order are the next item on the agenda.

Mr. Chairman, the Minister highlighted some interesting things in his opening comments and I just wanted to sort of acknowledge them. I’d like to hear a little more under the Transportation Licence Plate Program to find out when exactly that launch is predicted. A couple of years ago I suggested that we use our tourism catch phrase on our licence plate and I’m not sure what’s evolved from that other than the fact that the Licence Plate Program would start off with some new ones and I’m just curious if we’ve gone with a bit of a tourism catch line or a look and feel instead of saying “Explore Canada’s Arctic,” because, as I said at the time over three years ago, that the Northwest Territories doesn’t really represent Canada’s Arctic anymore. Even though we do have some Arctic, that isn’t our

primary focus. We have much more to our Territory than that.

Mr. Chairman, as Mr. Jacobson said, it’s nice to see the road to Tuktoyaktuk really get moving with a gravel source process. I know I’ve supported that initiative since I’ve been here and we’re here almost seven years later and we’re really hearing that that’s finally moving forward.

I just want to speak in favour, as the Minister has highlighted, I want to speak in favour of the work that’s being done to date in partnership with Indian and Northern Affairs on the Mackenzie Valley Highway that will help sort of identify logistics and understand the problem as people prepare to say what work needs to be done, whether it’s technical aspects, environmental aspects or whatnot. I just want to emphasize my support for that project because I think in the long run that will continue to be an asset to our Canadian infrastructure, not just territorial, but Canadian infrastructure. I’ve often thought that that highway, of course, does a lot of things. It opens up a tourism corridor, it opens up a corridor between communities, which unite families. It also helps with the cost of living. So I think it would be a good day for our Territory to finally fulfill Diefenbaker’s dream of the road to resources, because industry tells me that they’re looking for ways to help make their projects cost effective and certainly transportation always factors into these problems, followed by the cost of energy. But the road is a significant component of this situation.

Just on the same note, the roadwork toward the Slave Geological Province, I’m not too convinced at this moment that that’s going to be the end all and be all for the existing diamond mines. I think the problem is it’s going to come into usefulness during the end of their sort of life, but what I think it will do, though, speaking of the whole industry, is it will help the industry again find new ways to do business, it will open up new corridors for development when it comes to resources. So by and large, though, I think that will help continue to provide an anchor to our economy for new ways of drawing new industry to our North. So that road certainly will be a significant development and will change the way we do business as well.

Lastly, I’m not trying to use a lot of time here, Mr. Chairman, I’d like to place a chord or two in the area of the bridge. I know it’s gotten a lot of flack over the last few days and my position right now at this time, until I’m convinced one way or the other, is comfortably in a position of we need to get this project completed. I think, as I’ve said time and time again, legacy infrastructure is always plagued with problems whether its cost or technical issues, people are for it, people are against it. Regardless, once the project is done, once the first couple cars go across that piece of infrastructure, I think people will be going across it thinking why didn’t we do this

before, what took us so long. I mean, as most infrastructure projects go, it’s not unusual for them to have price adjustments. Although this will have a full accounting over time, I have no doubt that there’s going to be some people looking back to say what happened here or how could we do projects differently and, most certainly, how can we do projects better. This will be another example of building Canada and that’s my point of view on this particular project. It’s an essential project to the continued building of our North.

I’ll say, with some disappointment, that the federal government has never come forward to assist this government with this type of cost. If we were a province and we had a truckload of MPs or a whack of senators or those types of things, you know, I mean, they’d be at our doorstep saying how can we help with this type of infrastructure. It’s a shame that we only have one senator and certainly it’s a shame we only have one MP. Of course, at this time, our MP doesn’t even represent the party that’s in power at this time. So the likelihood of getting an investment on this project is obviously none.

I really wish we were in a different situation today to have the support of our federal government on this particular project. I hope once it’s done everyone is able to look forward and say it certainly had a rough ride as such but it will become a legacy project for the North because, as I’ve emphasized a few times, people build infrastructure of this kind with real vision. They dare to dream and they certainly take the leap that is sometimes required. I’m not going to sit here and complain about it. We’ve got a lot of positive things we can do and I look forward to hopefully continuing on that type of tone. That’s all I have to say in my opening remarks.