Thank you, Mr. Chair. I, obviously, had some questions about the highway, the Tuk to Inuvik highway, and the expenditures there. I guess we should be celebrating the fact that we’re going to look to accelerate this project and move forward. It sounds like the project could be moved forward and get done earlier than expected. I’m assuming with that we’re on budget, as well, but the difficulty comes in the fact that we’re asked to approve these budgets, and the Tuk to Inuvik highway was one of those dilemmas.

As a Member from the south, is that a project that we would support or not support? We ended up supporting the project because we knew there was going to be economic benefit to the region, which all indications are that the economic opportunities there were limited. There are a lot of people unemployed, and this was going to provide an opportunity for those people. Now that we’re in the midst of the project, now we get the department coming to us and saying, well, we just need to get the job done, the contractor agrees that we can move it forward and get it done. Now we’re wiping away those issues of economic development, the training, the implications of how this project will affect the Beaufort-Delta, and not only the individuals but the companies that are involved.

I guess my concerns are the fact that yes, I’m happy to hear that, but on the other hand, it seems like when we do these projects it’s just “let’s get it done.” We’re seeing some of that dilemma in big contracts, even construction of our hospital in Hay River. It’s a big contract. It seems like we just need to get it done. We have a contractor that seems to push our subcontractors, some of the local and northern contractors, to go let’s just get it done. We need to get this done. You need to put more money to it. We have a schedule but now we need you to ramp it up because we want to get done early and we want to maximize our potential and maybe even take on more profit. My concerns are that we are accelerating this not to the benefit of the Northwest Territories but the benefit of just getting it done and the benefit may be potentially to the contractors.