I appreciate that additional information. This is a zone of a lot of thaw slumping. Is this area flat? Is it, fortunately, flat, or is it a bit rough that we’re going through and what’s the susceptibility to the thaw slumping?

Thank you. I hope that works out. As I understand it, these are fairly dramatic in terms of the size and implication. The wiping out a road is a small thing in an event such as this. Obviously, there is a concern there, but it sounds like the department is aware of that and working on that.

The Minister mentioned $2 million for maintenance, and that remains to be seen – again it’s an estimate – and that there will be hiring as a result of that. He used that to justify the economic development aspects of the road. That’s a very strange statement to me. We can hire people without having a road there if we just want to pour government dollars into hiring people. I thought we were talking about real economic development.

I appreciated the Chair allowing me earlier, after letting the Minister wax loquacious several times about his dreams about this project for as long as he can remember, and I appreciated the Chair allowing me to question in that regard. I’d like to ask one more, with the Chair’s permission. Have we considered, in terms of economic development that would actually address the cost of living and many other broad government goals, self-reliance and so on of our communities, a way to engage their real skills other than grading and digging? Have we considered working to make these two communities the first totally renewable energy communities in North America with less of an investment but much greater provision of very long-term and meaningful jobs that would allow skill development and engagement of our population up there? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. I will hope to keep that door open for you. Minister Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We’re doing work across the Northwest Territories as it pertains to renewable energy. In the Beaufort-Delta, we’re looking at helping Inuvik deal with their gas situation, and one of the more immediate focuses is on the potential of liquid natural gas. At the same time, we are still

examining the opportunities that exist at Storm Hills between Inuvik and Tuk as it pertains to some options and potential for some world-class wind development there. Those are two areas that we’re looking at, where you would be able to run lines to Tuk once the road is in. The other thing about the road is, once the road is in, we’ll be able to put the fibre optic line down as well. The road would also make access and maintenance of the Storm Hills wind site much easier as well. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Mr. Bromley, your time is up. If you need some more, just let me know. Moving along with questions I have the Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.

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.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Replies. Minister Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the Member taking the time to summarize her thoughts on this particular matter, and I appreciate her final determination to support the project. Thank you.

That’s all. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Continuing on this page with questions, I have Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to provide a bit of an explanation of where I’m coming from with my questions and concerns. I didn’t really go into that fully when I asked questions earlier.

First of all, I’d like to thank Mr. Bromley for bringing up the point that there really is a glacier as part of that road, the Wisconsin Glacier. It is noted in the risk matrix, which the department has recently provided for us. I’d like to also note that the Minister of Finance earlier stated, when he was making some remarks, words to the effect that Members from the south who have everything in the way of infrastructure are against getting the same for those in the Beaufort-Delta area. I was pretty close to being truly offended. That is not my motive. I am quite annoyed that the Minister suggested that is my motive: because I have everything I’m not ready to give something to people who don’t have everything.

The other thing that is really bothering me about this issue is that Members from the north or Members supporting this project seem to think that because I have concerns for this project that I am against them or the project. That again is not true. I do believe in this project, and I do want every region to be prosperous. I don’t wish for people to be living in poverty, for people to be living without jobs, for people to be feeling depressed, and for their whole region to feel down and like they’re never going to get up. I don’t want that.

However, I am quite troubled by the amount of money that we as a government are having to spend on this project. We’ve gone from a promise of 75/25 funding to now where we’ve got in the bag, so to speak, 67/33. That’s more money than what I was hoping we would have to spend. We got less money than what I was hoping for from the federal government.

This is a huge project, and one of my great difficulties in these last few days has been being asked to make a decision on a large amount of

money with little opportunity for some concrete information. I know we are given all the information that the department has and the Minister has at this time. That doesn’t give me much comfort when there’s an awful lot of questions that I still have in my mind and there are an awful lot of unknowns and risks.

For me as a Member, I feel that I have to do due diligence. I have to look at any project and any expense that comes before me that I’m asked to approve, and I have to look at it and determine whether or not it’s the best use of our money. People would say, okay, yeah, we’re getting $200 million from the federal government, so that’s a pretty good use of our money. It’s 33-cent dollars is what we’re spending. But I still have to go back to my belief that the federal government should be funding our new highways 100 percent. So in my mind, that’s a loss. I have a really hard time with that.

If I encounter a project that makes me feel uncomfortable, I have to ask questions about it, and I have to question whether or not the project is of value, whether or not we should go forward with the project. That doesn’t mean that I don’t want a particular community or region to get ahead. It just means that I feel we need to seriously question why we’re doing something, where we’re going with it, and is it a good thing to do. That’s what I’m trying to get across. If people are offended by that, well, I’m sorry.

This particular project makes me feel really uncomfortable. There are risks. I know the department has identified those risks. Many of them are quite high risks because we’re building a road in an area where we haven’t really built roads before. It’s an area that is known to be difficult to build in. Those risks that we do not yet know or that we have out there and don’t know how they’re going to play out, they’re uncontrollable. I don’t think there’s anybody in this room that can say we’re going to go to that spot on the road and we’re going to be able to spend $5 million there and not one penny more. When we get down to a certain level, we’ll discover that, well, oh, that’s where there’s a huge ice lens and, oh, geez, it’s going to cost us $7 million instead for that very same spot. We can’t control those risks, and we can’t control certain expenditures that are going to come up. That’s a real concern for me. This is why I am really hesitant about this project.

Because we have unknowns, I feel that we are at the mercy of something that we can’t control. We’re at the mercy of the unknown. I feel that we are, I’m pretty sure, as I think somebody mentioned earlier today, that we’re going to have to have a Minister come back and ask us for more money for this project somewhere down the line. I’m not quite

ready to bet money on it yet, but I’m pretty sure it’s going to happen.

One of the things that I have tried to ignore but can’t is my experience with the Deh Cho Bridge. Once bitten twice shy is an expression that really applies to me here. The Deh Cho Bridge experience was painful. I didn’t enjoy it. I felt very conflicted all the way through, constantly being asked to approve more money, more money, more money, and I get a huge sense of foreboding that this project is very similar to the Deh Cho Bridge.

One of the things that have come out is that a couple of Members have said that I am sort of against this project because I am making assumptions. Well, I think assumptions can work in both ways. On the one hand, you can make an assumption that is positive and ignore the fact that there might be some risks involved. Some people are saying, well, you’re making erroneous assumptions and so therefore your point of view or your opinion or decision is flawed. I feel that, on the other hand, we have to make some assumptions because we don’t have all the facts. That goes back to the risks. There are unknowns in this project. Some of us will make an assumption to the positive, and some of us will make an assumption to the negative. Neither is right, neither is wrong.

Probably the biggest unknown for me in a general sense is that the project is only 85 percent designed. I know this money will go towards finishing that design. But again, we’ve got a lot of bridges. We have a lot of water crossings that we don’t yet know whether or not we’re going to be able to build them for a little bit of money or a lot of money. At this point where I’m being asked to make a decision on something that’s only 85 percent known, I appreciate – I think I used the term best guess earlier – that the estimate is probably a little bit more than a best guess.

But when it comes right down to it, we’ve had people who have looked at this project, they’ve taken their skill, they’ve taken their knowledge, and they have identified an amount as an estimate. But it’s still a bit of a guess. It’s an art. I agree estimation is an art, and I think it’s definitely a very good guess. But it’s a guess because we cannot with certainty say it’s only going to cost us $299 million for that road. If somebody could guarantee me that, I would take them up on it in a heartbeat.

The only other thing I guess I wanted to say is that the Transportation Minister earlier, and I can’t remember quite when, but earlier at some point in time stated that the project wouldn’t go forward without 75/25 funding split from the federal government. I appreciate that things have changed, but it only adds to the sort of negative things for me that are already there in terms of this project. It’s more money for us. It’s causing us to be further in debt. We have yet to know the impact it’s going to

have on other large capital projects down the road. Although the Finance Minister will tell me that’s okay because we planned for $50 million a year and now we’re only $20 million a year, so it’s all good. Hard for me to believe that.

I’m not quite sure. I approve the project. I cannot approve, I think, the funds that we’re being asked to approve here. I think I will, probably I will… I may abstain. I will not vote for this project. I may not vote against it.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the Member sharing her point of view and her assessment of the circumstances related to this particular project. We are elected in this Assembly to make choices when we are presented with information and it’s time to move on a project like this. That is our challenge here today, and I appreciate that it’s caused some angst with some of the Members.

At the end of the day I want to as well assure the Member that my intention was not to offend her. I was making an observation, and if I have offended her, I apologize. That was not my intent. Having said that, I thank her for her comments, and I look forward to the final outcome of this deliberation.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Ms. Bisaro, your time is up. Moving on page 5, I have Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The comments were actually made to me, so I would accept the Minister’s apology too.

Just on the fibre optic line, if I can pick up where we left off there. Obviously it doesn’t need a road. If this project goes ahead, it will obviously soak up a lot of infrastructure dollars for, as we know, very little economic gain. I believe the 400 seasonal jobs for each of five years and, according to the economic study done by the department, 42 long-term jobs over 45 years. I don’t know if the tenure might be a long-term job. I’m not sure of the definition there.

With the loss of oil and gas jobs and so on, there’s no net gain there, especially compared to putting work into renewable energy projects. My concern is that this will, of course, shut down those renewable energy projects which offer real economic development and returns for the people of the region because the infrastructure dollars will be soaked up by this project. I guess, having heard the Minister’s dream, I just want to share my dream that someday this government will decide to actually invest in projects that are really designed to permanently enhance community economies and the future of our residents.

The Minister of Transportation at some point spoke of good intentions. I don’t question that. I think the intent is good here. I have to reiterate the comments of my colleague Ms. Bisaro that, very quickly, we are not speaking against the people because we don’t think they shouldn’t have anything. We are actually being forced to make decisions based on less than full information. We’ve had experience on what that can bring. My intent in raising these questions and comments is to actually do justice to our Beaufort-Delta residents and of working towards actually improving their lives and futures and their community economies, as I mentioned.

In summary, I guess, this project will clearly not provide the answers we want. It is simply doing the same thing harder, once again, with our fingers crossed and our eyes closed. I think there are enough sort of very large-scale challenges coming down the pipe at us that we’re aware of that we can’t afford to do this anymore. We have to be better, and we have to not look for the temporary short-term fix. We need to focus dollars such as these on ways of doing business that will actually meet the objectives that we want.

I would ask the Minister, just by way of a question, does the Minister expect that there will still be lots of money for renewable energy projects in this region, even if this project goes ahead and anticipating that it will certainly – almost guaranteed – be more expensive to both build and maintain?

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. Miltenberger.

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.

The Minister is twisting my words again, but he’s getting pretty good at that. Obviously, I would say that the amount is well over $100 million already. We know that, having already spent $11 million or $12 million on this, so the Minister is already low-balling it here. But I guess I would ask how the hydro development is going to help lower costs for the people of the Beau-Del, but that’s getting a little far astray. The Minister keeps making remarks that take us away from that project. That’s really all I have. I won’t be supporting this project and I would love the opportunity to support a project in this region that would really give the people what they really want.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. I’ll allow the Minister a reply if he needs to. Minister Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If we look collectively as Northerners at the Northwest Territories, if regions prosper then we all prosper. If things go well in the Beaufort-Delta then we all benefit, if we can put in hydro transmission links that promote development. As former Minister Duncan said when we were in Ottawa, there are about 25 projects on the go, about $21 billion worth of activity, but a lot of it’s predicated on access to reasonably priced power. If we put transmission lines in and we and promote that kind of sustainable economic development, then the money goes into our coffers in general revenue and everybody benefits. That’s the whole beauty of our kind of arrangement here and the free enterprise system and a balanced approach to sustainable development and protecting the environment as we move on resource development. We have to do this because we’re all on the same side here and we all benefit when one region wins or another region wins. It all benefits and we all benefit at the end of the day.

Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Moving on with questions on page 5 here, I have Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is the first time I’ve spoken to this particular issue. I was going to parcel my comments on the $5 million and keep them separate from the $60 million portion, which is on the next supplementary appropriation. I can appreciate the fact that Members had to speak to both at the same time.

I’m certainly in a peculiar position when I think of this project, because, to be frank, I feel that not any one person, I should say it that way, but I feel, to some degree, like we’ve been painted into a corner that if we question the project, that we’ve been seen as questioning the region, and I have to admit

there’s this feeling that when we’ve asked questions, people are characterizing as if we don’t support the region at all. I wish that wasn’t the case, but that has been an undertow to this problem right now. I mean, a lot of this is called due diligence by us. The public would have an expectation that we would ask lots of questions to make sure that the project could be defended, and that’s the problem. This project has become emotional as opposed to, sort of, a technical discussion, and so when we ask questions about where are we going to make up the money, inevitably someone will say under their breath, well, you just don’t like the people of Inuvik and Tuk. That’s why. And that’s not the case. That has never been the case, at least from my position, and I’ve never thought of it that way.

I can still remember being introduced to the project by Calvin Pokiak, when Calvin first got elected in 2003. We were part of that class of 2003. We sat down with Mervin and he laid out this scribbly old piece of paper that you could hold up in the air and you could almost see through the thing. That map had travelled so many times and so many years about the initial 140 kilometre highway and the challenges thereof. Mervin explained the narrative, how that originally came across, and we talked about it at the time. Then I remember the asks about supporting the initial phase of let’s build to 177, to that gravel source, and that will help. Once we kick it off, we’ll start kicking off the longer length of the project, and how the bigger project will grow as time presents itself.

I mean, the fact is, it should be no surprise to anyone here, I mean, I’ve said it repeatedly that I support nation building, and certainly that’s part of the reason why I stood, in a comparative sense, to why I got behind the Deh Cho Bridge. I always believed it was so nation building. And I say likewise, it’s because I do believe in the principles of this highway. I’ve never swayed from that thought, because I think that it’s important. I’ve never believed that public infrastructure comes cheap. I’ve always believed it’s always fraught with headaches, whether it’s public headaches, financial headaches, criticism, critiquing, you know, you name it, throw it in there. But it’s the responsibility of our elected politicians to question these things and make sure that they stand the test of questions. It’s frustrating because, again, it’s almost as if it’s characterized us when we’re questioning these types of things. Then we have to question them maybe in a similar manner of the Deh Cho Bridge how we’re coming after the fact and asking why did we continue down this road. When we look at this project going forward as a forward investment, we’re asking what did we learn from the last one.

I don’t say this stuff for the goodness of my health. I would be a much happier person if we didn’t have to go through this process time and time again but, I mean, that’s part of the concern here, is how we

prepare. I mean, it was about a week ago we were talking about $299 million as our upper limit to our risk, and many of us, like myself, envisioned a 75/25 split and the government’s costs would be $75 million. Well, today we learned it just grew by $25 million in a heartbeat over a signature on a piece of paper. I mean, there was no guarantee that it would continue to be a 75/25 split. As we all know, it was a $200 million estimate a year or a year and a half ago, two years ago, and things have changed. I recognize that. I’m not certainly fooled, but to cause concern at the same time, we have to ask ourselves about the ripple effects of these particular initiatives. You know, we’re fighting for every ounce or every single peanut on this side of the House for investments on our views, but $25 million, oh, don’t worry, we booked more. Here it is. No problem, from the Cabinet side.

A week ago we were scrambling and trying to get government to look at our $4 million asks, and they complained, woe is me, we could not afford another ounce from Members’ benefits of suggestions, and we were only suggesting to government’s bottom line on their budgets. We were trying to put money in your budgets. I wasn’t taking any of that money home, nor was any Regular Member. Yet, we were told the cupboard is bare, absolutely bare. Then we hear Minister Miltenberger go on and on about the fiscal strategy, how we wanted just a little more, and the Members’ perspectives on how our sides were worried about things like prevention and addictions, and how important those things were to us and the views of the Assembly, but yet there was just never any money for those things. Not enough money, that is. No. But as I recall our discussion back to this very point now, which is but there’s 25… These aren’t pennies from heaven. These are more like gold bricks falling into the side of Cabinet. I mean, they can always find $25 million for their projects. It’s a struggle.

I wanted to focus my comments strictly around the $5 million. I do have further comments for the $60 million portion. What I’m going to say is I’m going to save my questions more so for the $60 million only because I thought people are kind of getting exhausted on this particular budget item or budget line.

But there is one area I would like to ask, which is will the Minister guarantee that there will be no carry-overs of this $5 million? We have heard repeatedly how they need this $5 million as soon as possible. If we look at the calendar that the Assembly at the earliest it can pass it is at the 14th of March, that leaves it slightly over two weeks for them to spend $5 million. My fear is that this money is being… The $5 million portion. I’m not talking about the $60 million. The $5 million is being thrust upon the Members so quickly so they can get a commitment out there in a contract, but it won’t be

spent and it will be applied for through the FMB process to carry it over to the next budget.

What type of guarantee will the Minister provide this House that this money was of such urgency, the $5 million portion only, that they will have it all completely spent before the end of the budget year? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Minister Miltenberger.