Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This motion that comes before us today I believe is very timely. I’ve often stood up in this House and asked for some responsibility and accountability when it comes to this project. I’ve questioned this project since becoming a Member of this House back in 2001.

The deal, and I won’t give a long history lesson here as we talked at length yesterday about this project, but it was signed off three days prior to the last territorial election. This project did make some sense at one point in time when the project in its entirety was self-financing. That wasn’t the case when the former Premier came to the Regular Members and said he had a contractor, it was going to cost $165 million and, by the way, folks, we’re going to have to ante up another $2 million a year on top of our already agreed to commitment of the ferry operation money and the ice road crossing money, which was about $1.8 million a year.

So when that happened, this project changed. The complexion of this project changed immensely. It became a different kind of project. Members of this House, up until just recently when we approved the $15 million supplementary appropriation, had never had a chance to debate the merits of the project, to debate any of the financial implications of the project, and that is something I do believe we need to take a look at. We need to have the Auditor General come in and have a look at it.

I still don’t fully comprehend how the government could agree to proceed with a project that judging by the most up-to-date cost-benefit analysis would indicate that we’d be facing a negative $53 million cost if we proceeded with the project. But the

government proceeded with it. You’re left wondering why we ventured down that road.

We had no support from the federal government. All along the path the former government and the former Premier kept saying that the project wasn’t going to go ahead unless we had some substantial capital dollars coming from the federal government. Those never materialized. The federal government did not come to our assistance to help us with the project. My belief is that is because they realized the negative cost-benefit analysis, they realized that this type of expenditure to service 25,000 people who are inconvenienced a few weeks out of the year just because we wanted a bridge, I think the Government of Canada didn’t come to the table for a reason. I think eventually they would have under a different set of circumstances, that would have seen them be a partner with our government and the aboriginal governments that are or were, who knows what the disposition is currently, involved with the project. I think under different circumstances the federal government may have come around on that.

This project certainly has the possibility of crippling our finances. That is a real and present situation that we find ourselves in. One hundred sixty-five million dollars, whether we take five years or 10 years to have that specially accommodating by the federal government if and when that happens, that’s out there as well whether in fact that is going to happen. Eventually we’ll have to pay for this bridge. I know some of it is self-liquidating. Some of it will come off as a matter of course over time. Initially we are going to have to pay the price for this bridge.

Getting back to the responsibility and accountability that comes with being in a position where you can exercise your authority, you can exercise decision-making, and decisions are made in our government by Cabinet Ministers around the Cabinet table. This decision was made by the previous government, as I mentioned earlier, in the very dying days of the last government, on information that anybody looking at it on the surface would question whether or not that was a good deal to be getting ourselves into. We all know full well the situation that the government currently finds itself in.

I think we need to put closure to this project. We need to finish the project. We need to conclude that. But at the end of the day I think the residents of the Northwest Territories, the people who elect us here to this Assembly, deserve and have the right to get to the bottom of the responsibility and the accountability side of this.

My hope in bringing this motion forward today is that the Auditor General of Canada can help us get some of those answers, can help us get some recommendations that moving forward this government can look back on and make better

sound decisions on behalf of the residents and the taxpayers here in the Northwest Territories. The Auditor General should have the unfettered ability to get into the details of this project so that as a government, again, we can use this information and the recommendations that will fall out of it as a way to make better decisions.

That, in a nutshell, is what the motion is saying. I hope Members can support this motion. I think it’s a step in the right direction. It will help us put some closure on this even though the bridge is only... Well, it’s debatable whether it’s halfway constructed or 35 or 40 percent constructed, but we’ll go with the Minister and say it’s half constructed. Again, I hope Members do support this motion and I thank them very much for their support.