David Ramsay

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Mr. Pokiak.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. On Friday, we left off on general comments with Mr. Pokiak. As he is not here, I suggest we take a short recess.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Mr. Pokiak.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d like to start by congratulating the Minister for a fine budget address yesterday and the presentation of the budget that was conducted yesterday. I know both the Finance Minister and the Premier and the rest of Cabinet have worked very hard over the course of the last year to try to make do with what we have and also to secure some additional funding from the federal government. I applaud their efforts in that and look forward to perhaps working with them going forward to secure more of that funding, especially in terms of the resource revenue sharing, which, as...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my underlying theme here is the Government of the Northwest Territories did not have to look at losing millions of dollars. I wonder if the Finance Minister today could make a commitment to try to find out exactly what went wrong with this deal and why the Government of the Northwest Territories is going to be on the hook for millions of dollars in this deal.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Again, I find it really difficult to imagine how the world’s largest diamond manufacturer could not meet the standards set out by one of our northern producers. Nobody seems to know what the Leviev Group was asking or what BHP was willing to give up. Nobody really knows. BHP says one thing, Leviev says another, and the Finance Minister can’t say anything. Where are these diamonds coming from? They are coming out of our territory here. I think we have an obligation to try to get to the bottom of this. We are losing millions of dollars, Mr. Speaker. We don’t know what...