Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to thank my colleague from Frame Lake for bringing this motion forward, because it's an interesting process we go through where we all set our priorities and then Cabinet sets the mandate. A lot of that done is done in confidence for good reason, because that's consensus government, but there has to be a public debate on this. Ultimately, I am not in support of the motion because I don't believe we are actually having the debate right now on the Slave Geological Province Corridor. This is $2.5 million to begin environmental assessment, Madam Chair. Environmental assessment work is fundamental to telling us some more facts about this project, to answering some of the large questions about what its effect will be on the Bathurst caribou. In our mandate, we say this work is going to carry on until 2024, Madam Chair. I think we have to put these things in perspective, that we have been talking about all of these major infrastructure projects for years, decades in some cases. Largely, they are a dream of the mining industry. It's a dream to expand Taltson, which would find cheaper power, and then put a road through the Slave Geological, then to connect it to Grays Bay Port project, a multibillion-dollar investment that I think we could never afford. There are some valid questions to be asked, you know: if we are going to slowly put money into this, a million dollars here and there, and then it's just going to come to a point where we cannot afford to construct it, would that not have been money better spent?
However, Madam Chair, I think that the environmental assessment work is key to answering some of the questions I have. There are so many what-ifs about this project. Eventually, this Assembly or the next or one of these Assemblies will have a debate on whether to fund that construction, but I do not believe that is the debate we are having at this time. I struggle because we developed these priorities in Caucus and we all did not agree on all of them, but that is the nature of consensus government, so I struggle to now try to remove one of our priorities and to remove essentially a mandate item that was agreed with all 19 Members. Ultimately, there are some huge questions, and I think we have all raised them: the future of mining in the Northwest Territories; will it employ enough Northerners; will it provide benefits to our residents; what will the effect be on the Bathurst caribou herd; is this project viable without the Grays Bay Port project; is it viable without Taltson? I don't actually have answers to these, and I do not believe anyone does because there are a lot of moving variables.
The fact of the matter is that the most important decision in any of this is outside of our controls, and that is commodity prices, Madam Chair. What drives whether this business case makes sense is the price of the minerals we have in the ground. One of the interesting things about this is it also is in Akaitcho territory, which is another huge question mark for me in this process, is that: should we be building a highway through Akaitcho territory, knowing that eventually that will be their land? If this was the decision, to build the highway right now and the Akaitcho was unsettled and the Bathurst caribou was in the state it's in, I would not be in favour of this. However this is the decision whether to do an environmental assessment, which will help me with many of those questions, Madam Chair.
Ultimately, this is also 75 percent funded from the federal government. We have a contribution agreement in place. I keep telling Cabinet: go and get money from the federal government. At some point, I know we are driven by the allure of 25-cent dollars, and that is a bit of a problem to our sovereignty, but the reality is that, if the feds are willing to give us 25-cent dollars, I will take them. I keep directing Cabinet to do so, so I don't feel comfortable voting to remove what is 75-percent dollars. Thank you, Madam Chair.