Thank you, Mr. Chairman.I will try to be brief and I will not repeat all the things I said the first go-round. There were some consistent themes here about the borrowing limit, the sustainability of our budgets and the need to start making those hard decisions now, which we concur with.
In regard to Mr. Bouchard, he asked for some history and information of the borrowing limit, how did we get to where we are and just note for the record that we will provide that information to committee. He had some queries about the ice road, the Tibbitt Lake-Contwoyto ice road possibly being converted as a project to an all-weather road and what is the benefit and are we losing our focus on the Mackenzie Valley Highway. The answer is no. The Mackenzie Valley Highway is a very critical piece of our transportation infrastructure. It will form part of the National Highway System when it’s complete, and the piece from Wrigley to Norman Wells is going to be the critical next step and we are very committed to that. However, the ice road conversion is also a very potentially important and beneficial project that would see that ice road converted to an all-weather road, opening a window for the mines that are currently there as well as creating another opportunity for other development in that North Slave Geologic Province. Industry is interested and we are talking to industry and working with industry as we do the technical and business casework about investing in having that happen. So, while they are going to benefit, they are also going to be putting money on the table to help pay for that, and as we’ve done on the bridge, there are other options to look at, as well, such as tolls and things.
I just want to point out the value when we say industry benefits. The whole point in terms of the cost of living is expanding our economic base. If one of mines closes, it’s $400 million, roughly, a year and about 1,200 jobs gone. So when we put in infrastructure that helps add to mine life or enables another mine to start up that might not have been economically viable until we put that infrastructure in, the benefit to everybody in the Northwest Territories is significant in terms of expanded tax base, jobs, money being spent in the North, and we have to keep that in mind as we look at those kinds of investments.
As well, there have been questions about the increase to population, and we indicated that we’re hard at work at that in the House. I talked about it at some length to the press yesterday, but we’re into year four. The Minister of Education is going to be standing up here soon to give us an update on all the significant opportunities that are going to be created with the revamping of the immigrant Nominee Program and the fast-tracking process to get folks in here in as little as six months.
Mr. Bouchard does, as well, raise a good point about the marine resupply and the low water, the dredging, and that’s an issue that has yet to be satisfactorily resolved, but we know it’s of pressing urgency to Hay River.
With the big projects for the South Slave, there is not a megaproject, but recently and in the next few years we’re concluding an almost $60 million hospital in Hay River. They’re just finished a $35 million retrofit in Fort Smith; there’s a new jail going in. Res and Providence are getting health care centres and we’re spending significant amounts of money on the highways, South Slave Highway No. 6, unfortunately not Highway No. 5, but Highway No. 6 and other highways. So it’s not a megaproject, but when you put all of those dollars together, there’s well over $150 million worth of investment. So at the same time we want to keep our eye on whatever other economic opportunities are there.
I do appreciate the comments from the Members about the budget. In regard to Mr. Nadli’s comments, we are working hard with Aurora Wood Pellets, for example, on the setting up of a biomass wood industry in the South Slave where Providence, Resolution, Kakisa, maybe the Hay River Reserve will be beneficiaries through forest management agreements and opportunities to provide the timber and the wood required for the wood pellets. That’s a very good deal.
As the Premier indicated yesterday in regard to the land claims agreements, the government made a very, very generous offer, far in excess of anything that was on the table previously to the Dehcho, both in terms of land quantum and addressing the
issue of subsurface. So I think we’ve really stepped up on that one.
I indicated in the budget address, as well, that this government will probably have moved, and this Assembly will have moved, more jobs outside of Yellowknife, I think, than any other government in recent memory. There will be 150 when we conclude the decentralization as referred to and there’s going to be some more coming as we look at other departments that have yet to come forward, like Environment and Natural Resources.
I want to just quickly touch again on the revenue issue. I talked about the debt previously. There’s talk about revenues being flat. In actual point of fact, our own source revenues, which are $425 million, are forecasted to be growing at about 3.5 percent a year for the next five years, which is, by a lot of standards, pretty healthy when you compare it to the overall projections when you factor in what happens to our formula because of all the economic uncertainty and debt and restraint down south. It flattens out our overall growth with the big $1.2 billion we get from our formula down to barely half a percent, but our own economy is actually doing fairly well. It just gets lost with the leveling out of the other pressures from down south.
The Mackenzie Valley Fibre Link, the big opportunity is going to be the final mile for communities up and down the valley, the hooking in of either the microwave or the fibre link into the communities through businesses, dev corps and putting in all the services that are going to be possible with cable and wiring the town. So there’s going to be significant opportunity there.
If this government and this Assembly, when we get the borrowing limit sorted out, the questions we have to answer are similar to some of the questions that Mr. Moses mentioned. Do we have to spend the money? Not necessarily. The big point for us is that as a government, though, we should have the flexibility to in fact have that choice, and if we need to make investments, we should be able to do it and decide on which investments. Thank you.