Thanks to the Minister. So, I mean, we’re working on a best guess, and I guess that with any project we’re working on a best guess, but it doesn’t give me much comfort at this point, unfortunately. It’s been mentioned several times already that we have been given, so to speak, $200 million from the federal government, and that’s a huge amount of money. I certainly appreciate the commitment of the federal government to the project. However, it’s my belief, and I believe it’s practiced elsewhere, that new roads are 100 percent paid for by the federal government and we are now getting 67 percent, approximately, of our project covered by the federal government. I’m having a very difficult time with the reduction. We were talking about a 75/25 split. I was relatively okay with a 75/25 split, but now we’re down to 67 percent and that just means that’s a greater burden on us, as a government, and it concerns me a great deal. It concerns me on two fronts, one, that we have to put more money in of our own and secondly, that the federal government, in my mind,
is backing away even further from their responsibility to pay for new roads across our land.
So I’d like to know, several Members have been talking about investment and that it’s economic development and so on, and it’s been referred to by a couple of people as a long-term investment. I’m having great difficulty understanding and believing, in my heart, that this is a long-term investment. I see the Mackenzie Valley fibre optic link as a long-term investment because it will grow businesses in the Beau-Del, and it will grow businesses and it will grow employment for people up there for a very long time. I see this project as not necessarily growing businesses, but it certainly will employ people, but only for a five-year period. So I don’t see this as a long-term investment. Could the Minister explain to me how this could be characterized as a long-term investment project? Thank you.