Floyd Roland

Mr. Chairman, the information that I can provide is the $145,000 as required for this is coming out of expenditures supported by the federal contribution funding agreement under the Aboriginal Justice Strategy Fund for this fiscal year of ’07-08. There are negotiations ongoing in trying to renew that agreement.

Mr. Chairman, the Department of Finance does have a risk section within it to look at our risks and liabilities. I’ll work with the department to see what we can provide.

Mr. Chairman, as I said, this is an additional amount of funding that goes toward the increased costs of this project. So we have to account for it in this manner, as a Vote 1 expenditure, but it’s coming out as a Vote 2, being the capital. It’s a top-up to the original amount to complete that project. But it will be, in Gametì, an infrastructure project, with the asset to be owned by the community government of Gametì.

Mr. Chairman, there were a lot of packages that have gone out. As well, individuals or companies could have gone to the department’s web site to download it off that process. At this stage there have been eight applications received, with the possibility of up to 13 scheduled for the end of January.

Mr. Speaker, with what we’ve proposed and previous governments have proposed — for example, in the document called Corridors for Canada — a number of infrastructure pieces were included in that.

My discussion with the Prime Minister did highlight the fact that if we are to take advantage of the economic opportunities available in the Northwest Territories, we need to get key pieces of infrastructure like the Mackenzie Valley Highway. We need to work around that. We need to build on the partnerships through industry and the federal government. We know ourselves that there is no way that we would...

Mr. Chairman, in fact, we can provide that number. I can give a quick update here, but we can provide an attachment to give the days spent in communities. The original amount budgeted for the ’07-‘08 fiscal year was $1,058,000. The court’s scheduled sitting days, as they are defined in 2006-2007, were 273, and in 2007 the sitting days scheduled — you need the total amount here — were 400. I’ll give you the actual amount. That was Yellowknife at 273. But the total communities, a grand total: 319 for ’06, 469 for ’07. And we’ll provide the attachment on the actual days that courts regularly sat...

Mr. Chairman, the total amount for this piece of the work is $1.925 million. That does not include the earlier amount for the work around dealing with the collapse as it occurred.

The department also informs that this work must be done during the winter season, as part of the condition on the water licence application from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, as we have to deal with this before spring runoff occurs to protect the fish habitat in that area. This bridge construction has to be done this winter, and the detour has to be removed before spring runoff occurs as well.

Mr. Chairman, this one is the result of being offset by a reduction to the Capital Investment Expenditures. So this is, again, a process of back and forth in how we deal with the construction of that facility.

Mr. Chairman, as we know, every budget has to be approved by this Assembly. The Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment has put forward a plan that reinvests the dollars over a number of years to fit this program over a number of years, so that is in the system.

Mr. Speaker, as laid out in an earlier question, there is a number of factors that come into play when we look at trying to limit the liabilities that we could be party to. Some of the shared risk here is between the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation, the construction company as well as the Government of the Northwest Territories because we’re seen as the backstop to this project, as Members have correctly pointed out.

So those liabilities, again, include, for example, an independent engineer to audit the construction parameters of this as well as some of the eligible costs that may be covered, or...