Bob McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Chair. On my right I have Mr. Dave Heffernen, chief information officer for the Government of the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for those comments. I agree with regard to our infrastructure. We should give ourselves an award in some cases. I think this is something that’s been around for a while, being held to a higher standard when we build buildings and other infrastructure. We would be very pleased to take the advice of the committee and find ways to be less grand while still fulfilling all of the Building Code requirements, safety standards and so on.

Most of our buildings, we amortize them over 40 years but most of them last longer than that. I think that the list of projects...

Thank you for those comments. I appreciate your perseverance. I think that the items in the budget, certainly Fort Simpson and I know the Trout Lake Airport has been worked on for some time. The Trout Lake School, as you know, there’s some planning money for it. The chipseal, obviously we wouldn’t want to see all that fine chipseal disappear, and we’ll talk to the department about that. I think we have some money for Highway No. 1. We were talking to industry about more investment in that area.

In the longer term, in talking with the federal government, they are very interested in what we’re...

Thank you, Madam Chair. With me I have Michael Aumond, deputy minister of Finance. Thank you, Madam Chair.

I don’t follow his logic, but I’m not surprised that he’s not supportive of developing hydro, which is a very clean renewable resource. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I speak to them all the time. I speak to the Minister responsible for the NWT Power Corporation all the time, and we are all working on developing a business case. We’re also developing the technical information to back it up.

I don’t have any opening comments, Mr. Chair. If we can just get right into it.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to bring in a witness, with your approval.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My understanding is there are quite a number of options that are out there. The option that is being pursued now is seen as the best, most immediate option. There are bacteria that eat arsenic that have been used in other processes to recover a mine. There are also some other approaches that are more expensive such as finding a way to get rid of the arsenic. One of the recommendations was to haul it away. So there are a number of options, but the option that is being pursued now that is being undertaken is the most immediate and will have the best way to control the...

Thank you. Very pleased with the support, and we see this hydro development and the transmission line as probably the biggest project that we can start in the next two years, or in the remaining life of this 17th Assembly. Thank you.