Thank you, Mr. Chair. This road from Inuvik to Tuk certainly has some national
significance. The Member spoke about the support for this road. We’re talking about the request before us. The people up in the Beaufort-Delta certainly did their part with regard to grabbing the federal government’s attention to see this road get started. Today I should talk about building this road.
The federal government, you know, dropped a few million into our pockets to get it going and made arrangements. No small, easy task, considering how difficult at times it is for our government to get funding from the federal government. It was all due to some strong support by the people in the Beaufort-Delta.
As I was looking through this budget, I’m trying to figure out what is the message here. What message are we sending our people? We clearly heard from various sources that the feds want to build one road at a time. We really want to push strong for the Mackenzie Valley Highway. We heard that they are interested in building one road at a time.
This is an unprecedented area. If you look at Russia, they have a similar terrain. They’re building roads in the North and we’re also building roads in the North here. The message is: Can we do this within the prescribed budget that we have and the accounting is set in place? More importantly, we’re building and we’re advancing skills like trades to build those. That’s most important for me, is that we’re developing the young people up there with skills and, looking at that area, how much better off it will be in the future if we continue to build that skill. It’s no different than us building the Deh Cho Bridge or when you have highways down in the southern part here. People benefit from it.
Looking at this road here, what is the message? The federal government is certainly watching us. They’re saying, here, I’ve given you $200 million. We’ve given you money. The next big project, if it goes well and goes through, is $700 million, then so on and so forth.
Can you, as a government, really take on the task of building infrastructure in the Northwest Territories? Do you have it? I know they’re watching. The Prime Minister especially is looking at it.
So I look at this and I’m going to be asking in the future, what have we learned from this experience. There is certainly a lot of experience being learned in the Tuk-Inuvik road. There must be so many checks and balances that it’s crazy. But it’s there because of all the process and regulations. We certainly want to take this learning experience and use it in the Sahtu and build from Norman Wells south to Wrigley and Wrigley to the north. So we want to look at both ends. We want to start, also, but we have to wait. That’s a matter of fact. So we’re looking at this experience.
I’m happy to hear that there are contractors and subcontractors. There were 44 subcontractors. Seventy-five percent were northern subcontractors. We can dig into the details of that and dig into the workers.
The Minister made a comment that we’re looking at this project with the dollars and we’ll look after these dollars as if it were our own. Well, we approved these dollars, so it is our own, on behalf of the taxpayers of Canada and the Northwest Territories. So there’s no higher level to request a $40 million accelerated advance, because these dollars are our own and it comes through the process here.
I’ve been thinking about that and I’m thinking about this road here and I’m looking at our past experience on multi-million dollar infrastructure in the Northwest Territories and bringing that experience to this forefront here and what are the lessons learned about whatever infrastructure we’re going to have. Our regions are going to have millions of dollars of infrastructure money from one department or the next. Here we are asking to accelerate this. I’m hoping that the department is working in conjunction, in partnership, with the contractors, and that we are doing this, because we are at the forefront.
My colleague Ms. Bisaro asked if the contractors were taking the lead. If that’s the case, we need to have a little more discussion, but I’m hoping the government can say we’re working in partnership with them. We are the one taking…because this money is being approved at this level here, the $40 million, to accelerate and to speed it up.
I wanted to make that comment. But overall, the whole infrastructure of the Tuk to Inuvik road, number one, we’re building skills and we’re building opportunities. In Inuvik and Tuk the economics are not very good right now. As my friend Mr. Bromley said earlier, zip is happening in that region, and zip is happening in the Sahtu now.
In the smaller communities and the Inuvik-Tuk road, I’m going to support this infrastructure request because I think it’s very important in the bigger picture. But I also want to say, because I’m just specifically focusing on this road here, all the requests and needs that Ms. Bisaro talked about should also be in the forefront of the minds when there are requests for other regions. This is a huge chunk of money to accelerate the project. I believe the staff are doing the best they can to explain it to us, given the moving project that we have, that it will be okay and the other regions with their infrastructure also being considered that we can look at work at how we support other regions that have similar requests.
So I want to say that I’m going to support the people up in that area and I think they’re doing a good job. I think they have a lot to learn and they
have done a lot of work to bring this to the forefront. We would have never done it unless the federal government was involved, and they became involved because of such strong work done by the leadership up there. So we should celebrate them.
Not all things are as smooth as we think sometimes, you know? So I hope we get the same support when we start looking at the Sahtu roads. Let’s celebrate the people. Good on them. We should be working with them. Thank you, Mr. Chair.