Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First I just want to reassure the Member and the people listening in here that we do all this money management with complete regard for our fiscal situation, which is why we get the clean audits and which is why we have the Aa1 credit rating and we managed to absorb some of these unexpected shocks because we always keep in mind looking after the taxpayers’ dollars as if it were our own. So I want to reassure the Member of that.
When the project was started, it was flagged right from the beginning that cash flow adjustment would probably be required, we just didn’t know how much. With a year under our belt, it became clear, once we actually moved dirt, built some roads, put in a lot of culverts and bridges, that we needed to adjust this cash flow to enable us to meet the schedule, the three years of embankment work followed by the fourth year.
Of equal importance is to keep this project on budget. So this is the most economical way to move forward. If we were to have the project run out of money and lay down tools and go away for the rest of the winter after starting up and they’re done in January and we end up paying $30 million to $40 million in fees and extra costs, the contractor’s lost opportunity to meet the targets, the budget, then indeed we would be a case of being penny wise and pound foolish where we would have a few dollars saved maybe in interest, but it would cost us $30 million to $40 million extra not
budgeted for. This $40 million is part of the project cost. So it would indeed be an unfortunate circumstance and a bad fiscal decision not to keep this project going. To put a stick in the spokes of the project and the very issues that MLA Bouchard talked about, for example, about all the local employment and local business, that would be a distinct disadvantage for the project and a negative impact on all the workers, all the businesses that are doing business right now. This is, we believe, necessary to keep this project solvent and alive.