Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Everything that I know about the people of the Beaufort-Delta tells me that they don’t get along just by crossing their fingers and keeping their eyes closed and hoping for the best. This is a project that is of significance territory-wide. It is clearly a huge project of significance to the people of the Beaufort-Delta, and we all, every one of us wants to have our communities connected by a permanent all-weather road. I think that that’s a good investment. I just happened to look at the newspaper today and I just noticed a column from Cece McCauley laying out her intense frustration about the road again in the Sahtu. For those that don’t have roads, this is an overwhelming issue.
We had booked $150 million for this project. Our share is coming in at $100 million. We’ve already committed to adding $50 million next year to the capital plan. We’ve also just signed a milestone agreement on devolution and we’ll soon be seeing those resource royalties flowing, and we will have the debate about how much of that infrastructure money goes to energy issues. Will there be resources to continue work in energy and biomass, and solar and hydro? Absolutely. We’re going to come forward with some very ambitious plans on
the hydro side where we’ll be having a very similar discussion to what we’re having right now in terms of sticker shock, in some cases, by some Members, possibly.