Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I guess I’ve already stood in this House at least on one occasion and shared some of my concerns about this project and those concerns still exist. I am concerned about the capability of our government to oversee this project and bring it in on budget. When I referenced the Highway No. 3 from the Rae turnoff into Yellowknife and the fact that we constructed that road right in the Canadian Shield with unlimited access to rock to blast and crush, and we couldn’t put down a roadbed adequate to not have the disaster that we see out there today. I expressed my concern with this size of a capital investment for a road to a small community and all the other pressing demands for capital investment throughout the territory. Let’s face it, when we spend money as a government on a scale like this, we buy this and we don’t buy something else or we don’t invest in something else. So I had expressed that concern as well.

I talked about the cost-benefit analysis. What are the benefits of this road? Some concern, as well, expressed by my colleague Mr. Bromley about the geotechnical and the ground conditions there that may haunt us in the future in terms of maintaining this road. I think I referenced the fact that I saw a photograph of our Transportation Minister and the Member for Nahendeh on a road trip on Highway No. 7 with, I don’t know who was standing in the hole, but you could hardly see them. That was where the road had just disappeared.

So I look at our existing road infrastructure, and I see the many challenges of systems like Highway No. 7, like the Dempster Highway, where we do not seem, as a government, to be able to afford to properly maintain the upkeep of the infrastructure we’ve got, yet we’d like to add some more in a remote region with difficult conditions to an extremely small community. I think that kind of recaps some of the comments and questions that I had before. However, it’s very hard to turn down that $200 million.

I am very empathetic with the economy in the Inuvik region, in the Beau-Del area there. In Hay River,

you would think, for all the infrastructure we have, there that we would not be suffering an economic slump. In fact, we have been for some time too. So I very much empathize with the desire of the people from that region to see some kind of a development that would bring some GNWT dollars into there and create some employment, even if it isn’t necessarily going to be extremely long term.

So I have concerns. But as my colleague from Hay River North said when we built the Deh Cho Bridge, the cost overruns on that and just the whole process will be a very unhappy memory in my political life being involved in that. But we do have the ongoing tolls to offset that investment. In this case, we don’t have an ongoing revenue stream but we have this $200 million on the table from the federal government, which is a huge incentive. I mean, let’s face it, that’s a huge incentive to proceed with this.

So in hearing all the pros and cons and ups and downs and, as Mr. Bouchard also said, some discussion about this in Hay River… I must say that when I came back at the beginning of session, I did tell the Transportation Minister and the Premier that with all the activity and all the backup of traffic going into the Sahtu that really our priority should be the Wrigley to Norman Wells highway. But we also have to weigh that with the fact that the federal government has a real desire to see this piece of infrastructure built, and they’re not offering us two-thirds contribution on a road from Wrigley to Norman Wells. Industry may be able to play a bigger part in that than they would in the Inuvik-Tuk highway. So there is that possibility going forward on that stretch of the highway.

We did, as a government, also make a commitment at the time that we went to have our borrowing limit raised from $500 million to $800 million, knowing that this was a high priority of the federal government to see this piece of infrastructure going into place. I believe we certainly made a moral if not legal commitment to the federal government at that time, that pending this increase in our borrowing limit, that we would join together with them to put this piece of infrastructure in place.

So I think that to renege on that now would certainly have implications with respect to our relationship with the federal government, and that’s one that, of course, we always want to try and keep on good terms.

So it has been a lot of back and forth. There’s been a lot soul searching. There’s been a lot of angst over some of the foreseeable challenges. I guess we’re just going to have to take the leap of faith and hope that the department can keep the project on track at a reasonable rate in terms of the costs, and hope that the ongoing operations and maintenance will not only bring some economy to the region but will also be a reasonable cost.

So with that explanation on this particular page for this additional $5 million at this time, I will be supporting it. Thank you.