Thank you. I do concur with the Minister. It’s always exciting news to hear that a project is going ahead of schedule, but I want to zone in a little bit on what was just said. The Minister mentions that money is spent for work done, and quite frankly, I think Members on this side of the House were led to believe that not all the work was done last season for various reasons, but again, this was the first year the group was building a road in a very trying environment, but there wasn’t all those milestones being met. So the work was not completely done so there would have been money lapsed from last year, which would be used in this fiscal year. Now, what we’re being asked from the committee here is to look at accelerating more money into the project without at least a proof of performance. Is that indeed what was being asked of Members here, that yes, we are trying to, we don’t want to hold back construction by any means, but we are being asked to bring money into a project without really having all the proof or all the matrixes checked off as being completed? So, in theory, it’s a bit of a leap of faith that we’re using public money to accelerate a project to which really has not met all the terms and conditions from year one and it sounds like we have got some pretty lofty goals for this fiscal year to complete X number of kilometres when really the track record hasn’t shown that.
I guess the level of comfort I know that some Members have on this side of the House may not
be as enthusiastic as the Finance Minister. What reassurance or what guarantees would we have if indeed we’re using this money, this $40 million now and taking it from this budget year, which indirectly could affect other projects that were in the queue for supplementation or start-up, we’re now taking money from a future budget season and accelerating it here, which is of concern for a few of us here.
So I guess the question is what guarantees, if any, can be placed, if possible, that proof of performance will indeed occur by this advancement of the project and this extra $40 million from our budget? Thank you.