Thank you, Mr. Thompson. Minister McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, if the Member sends me an email, we can provide him with a bit of an update, but all he needs to tell people is that the work was not completed, therefore the requirement for a carry-over. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank the Minister for that suggestion, but they would like a little more detail. I guess I'll follow up with an email with the Minister of Infrastructure on this, and try to get a breakdown, but I thank the Minister for providing information here today. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Thompson. I don't hear a question in there; we shall move on. Mr. Simpson.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm looking at some of the highway projects on here, and there are some big numbers and they are very labour intensive, these projects, and I was wondering if the Minister knows if the Department of Finance keeps track of what portion of these are being done by northern firms, or what portion of northern employment there is? We are spending a lot of money on these highways. I want to know: what sort of money is staying in the territory? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Simpson. Minister McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I believe they do keep track of the work, and I think it's part of the contract, and things may have changed, but you normally have to put your northern content in there. So all we need to do is have a conversation with Infrastructure as to what percentage was done by Northerners, and obviously we would like to see the bulk of this work done by northern companies, and I think for the most part, now maybe in the southern part of the territories there's a bit more challenge because they're a little easier accessible for the southern companies to move in, but we'll provide that information as to the northern content and how much might be going to northern businesses. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister McLeod. Mr. Simpson.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I know that these were all discussed, these were all previously approved last year, and so this is more about the carry-over, but with a lot of these big projects being from the southern part of the territory, I know that it's hard for the northern firms in the southern part of the territory to compete with a lot of these southern firms. Especially when you start talking about really big contracts, when the Business Incentive Policy doesn't apply so much. The reason I ask what the northern hire is, and the benefits of the North are, is because I think it's about time that we start looking at the costs and benefits of negotiated contracts sometimes, or breaking up some of the larger contracts into smaller ones that are more manageable by northern firms. Is that something that the department is doing, or the Minister is aware of? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you Mr. Simpson. Minister McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I take the Member's point that we do want the benefits of a lot of the money that's spent by the government to be with government firms, or with territorial firms. I think in the past they have tried to break down some of the contracts. I'm not sure about the infrastructure side of the highway contract, but I can have a conversation with the Minster of Infrastructure. We've heard your concerns, we've heard concerns from some of the businesspeople around the Northwest Territories about the fact that they feel that some of the southern companies come in and take advantage of the money that the GNWT spends, so ideally we'd like to see as much of this stay in the Northwest Territories as possible. We have a number of firms that deliver a quality product, and we should be taking advantage of that. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister McLeod. Mr. Simpson.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. If infrastructure saves ten bucks, and income support has to pay out one hundred, that's not good value to the GNWT in general. I'll just leave it at that, thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Simpson. Minister McLeod, did you want to provide a comment?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I think I am going to take the Members point, and I think you can look at the Tuktoyaktuk highway as a prime example of the money that stays in the territories, and I think we've all seen the number of folks who work there, so that is one of the benefits of that project. Income support numbers, I know, went down. Housing rent collections actually went up, so there is benefit. I take the Member's point; we take that very seriously. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you Minister McLeod. Mr. O'Reilly.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I do have some questions about Taltson Expansion. I know there is $200,000 in this supplementary appropriation package, in that $150,000 is coming from the federal government, so the rest is coming from us, and I thank the Minister and his staff for giving us a bit of a 10-year schedule of what might happen, but there is almost no information here, very little details on what this project is really all about. I understand he is prepared to provide some more information about the Great Slave Lake Crossing study, but this was something that was tried by Deger(ph) Energy. The environmental assessment for that was terminated in 2013, almost five years ago. So why is this being dredged up now? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. O'Reilly. Finally, some dredging getting done. Minister McLeod.

Thank you Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I am going to make an attempt to answer that, and if I'm wrong then I'm sure the Minister of Infrastructure will correct me. As far as the Member's first point on the information that we provided them, again, I think it goes back to an earlier point that one of the Member has made about the short timeline that we had from the briefing this morning, until we got into Committee of the Whole with the supplementary estimates this afternoon, so we tried to provide whatever information we could in that short timeframe. As we go forward, we're going to try and space this out so we can have a little bit of back and forth or give Members a little more detailed information that they can absorb before we have our discussion. That could be one of the reasons that the information on here, as far as five years ago, I think, now, this is being dredged up, because there is an opportunity here to tap into a lot of federal dollars. We start the work now. We will be able to access some of those dollars.

There is a big push from the federal government with all the initiatives they are rolling out the door by the bushel to support projects like this. This fits right into their mandate. There is an opportunity for us to put some preliminary work together, go to them with a fairly good business case, and then see if we can get the funding. We will go from there. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. Mr. O'Reilly.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the answer from the Minister. Look, Deger Energy didn't go ahead for a bunch of reasons, but one of the key ones was there was no buyer, no buyers identified at the end of the day. We still don't have any buyers either north of the lake or south of the lake. I just don't understand why this is being pursued.

If we use the money that we are trying to put into this project for almost anything else, whether it is energy retrofits in housing, small energy projects in smaller communities, we would get way more value for our money, I think. I am very interested in seeing this business case. Can the Minister confirm that there are no buyers for this power, there is nothing so far? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. Minister McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, my understanding, there are no buyers at this moment, but give us the opportunity to go and do the work, do the initial studies, go present the business case to Canada. If we present the business case to Canada and they look favourably on it, then that might, in turn, give us some buyers. I am just assuming that is going to happen.

If you want to sell a product, you have to have a good business case to sell that product, and we can put one together. It is $200,000 in the overall big picture. We do make a lot of other investments, as this floor obviously knows, in a number of different energy initiatives, territorial-wide.

If this is an investment of $200,000 to allow us to do the initial work, then make a fairly good business case, and try to secure funding, then we may be able to secure the buyers. That would be part of this, as well. Allow us to do the work. Then, if we come to the point where it is not feasible, we will have to cross that bridge when we come to it. Thank you, Mr. Chair.