Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Madam Chair. There is no policy. In the days of yore when the federal government was the major player on the scene, of course they had much greater responsibility. There is no formal policy that dictates the federal government has some type of responsibility to cover 100 percent of new roads.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Clearly, the Government of the Northwest Territories is the proponent and we’re going to oversee this. We have a $200 million contribution. We’re going to be responsible for building it on time. We’re going to be responsible, God forbid, should there be any cost overruns. We are the major proponent. The folks doing work with us in the private sector will have their own liability insurance for different areas of work, but in terms of being responsible for the overall project, that’s going to be overseen by the Government of the Northwest Territories through the...

Thank you. What we know is we have about $12 million in sunk costs that we’ve put in, preparatory work as governments do for big projects that are of critical importance to them. We have a project that has cost $299 million. We have a $200 million federal contribution and our cost will be the $99 million. I will point out, as well, that when we did our fiscal framework as we started a number of weeks ago now and we didn’t have the federal number, we had booked this project at $150 million of territorial investment just so that we had the costs covered off out of our fiscal framework. Now that...

Mr. Chair, I understand and can appreciate the Member’s concern in this instance. That money will be fully committed and expended. They’re going to work on that right away and it will be committed fully as soon as it’s approved in this Assembly. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. What I have learned is, when I’m given two figures, a high one and a low one, especially as Finance Minister, I tend to immediately focus on the high number, knowing that in my experience the low number never tends to be the one where the project ends up.

Thank you Mr. Chairman. This particular money, they’re just finalizing the decision of how they want to deal with this.

Yes, Madam Chair, the $5 million is dedicated towards the Tuk-Inuvik highway as laid out in the supplementary document. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We are doing two supps here, one for $5 million and one for $60 million. As has been discussed, approving these supplementary requests is going to signify and signal our commitment to this project for $299 million.

What the Member asks makes no sense to me. We are going to get the work started two weeks earlier in March. The money will be committed. The work is going to carry on past. It is going to be picked up by the $60 million that we are also going to be approving here later tonight, and the project will start to unfold. The Member is asking for something that...

It is part of the $299 million.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I believe Mr. Ramsay would like to respond.