Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I guess with item one there, $105.7 million carry-over, a lot of my concerns are the same as my colleagues’ concern, whether we have enough resources in this territory to ensure that the money is being allocated for these infrastructure projects, that we do have enough adequate resources to see it through. I would like to possibly see a strategic plan developed that will allow this government to be more efficient in getting these dollars spent, and obviously it will create work in our communities and create jobs. With that money being spent in communities, it will add to increasing our economy and especially in the regions here.
Item two, I am glad to see that there is an investment into these two projects here. I suggest that this government keep tabs on these projects just to see what the return on investment is with this initial investment. You don’t see in two to five years down the road how this investment today actually helped the government in terms of better spending and not spending so much money on other fuel.
I think we have all heard enough about the Deh Cho Bridge over the last couple of days. I myself want to see the bridge get done. I made some comments yesterday that it does take away, in my opinion, from other capital projects in the Northwest Territories. The sooner we get it done, we can kind of worry about the operations and maintenance of this bridge, but I’m hoping that this is the last time we see a supplementary appropriation come back for money for the completion of this bridge and we do get it done in the timeline that’s been mentioned here.
The $2.5 million for the Inuvik-Tuk highway, it’s good to see that in there again. I hope we see some very positive results from the geotechnical studies and the work that’s going into this project. Obviously, it is the beginning of developing the Mackenzie Valley Highway and I think it’s a good approach that we start from Inuvik to Tuk. The only reason being, as we continue this bigger project of the Mackenzie Valley Highway, if we have that structure in first, that component in first, it will lower the costs for the residents of Tuktoyaktuk and allow more services to get up to Tuktoyaktuk and also increase some of the work and economy in a region that’s desperately needing some work.
There’s not too much more I can say on these opening remarks from the Minister that hasn’t already been said by my other colleagues. We are making progress. Some projects we need to see get done. That’s it, Mr. Chair. Thank you.