Robert C. McLeod

Mr. Speaker, we do have a P3 policy that's readily available online. We might have to make it a little more accessible or put it right on the front page, because sometimes you have to navigate your way through the system to get at number of these policies. So we'll ensure that the policy itself is readily available if people want to have a look at it. But I think their big concern is not so much the policy, but the fact that this government wants to stretch our investments out a little further, get more projects for the communities across the Northwest Territories, because a lot of these...

In a P3 project is just what we bookmark for the project that goes towards our debt limit. So, for example, if the project is worth -- let's use $100 million as an example. If we have to put in $50 million, well $50 million would go toward our debt limit. If we go through the traditional procurement services, then all the money that's bookmarked for that particular project will go towards our debt limit.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'm proud to recognize my wife, Judy McLeod, who has joined us today in the gallery. Welcome.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following document entitled "Northwest Territories Heritage Fund Financial Statements for the Year Ended March 31, 2016." Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It's the same thing. Yes.

That legislation will be part of the Public Service Act.

We find that this is a way to have our infrastructure dollars go further, and some of the risk being on the proponent. So I think there's some value there. As far as oversight, I'll used the Inuvik-Tuktoyaktuk Highway for an example. We have an Inuvik-Tuktoyaktuk Oversight Committee that meets regularly and gets updates on the highway. So that type of oversight will continue for any of the other projects that we go through a P3 process; we get updated on Stanton quite regularly, we get updated on the Mackenzie fibre optic link quite regularly. So we have an enormous amount of oversight in...

Mr. Speaker, I spoke before about the success that we've had with the couple of programs that are operating in the NWT and also the success of the program that's operating in Australia, and we support the idea of bringing Indigenous Guardianship Programs to more communities across the NWT. Again, if it's a question of funding then we will work with our federal counterparts because we can see some benefit to the rest of the country if we have these particular types of programs across the country.

So I will make that commitment that we will work with our federal counterparts and through our own...

Mr. Speaker, I see a great benefit to the work of the NWT because it aligns with many of our current GNWT strategies and initiatives, examples like the Water Strategy Conservation Areas Networking Planning, Anti-Poverty Strategy and Culture and Heritage Strategy amongst others. We think that the guardian programs can play a critical role in the stewardship and strengthening the government-to-government relationships.

Mr. Speaker, that track record may have been in the past, way in the past, and we're starting to move ahead. Through devolution, we think we've got a lot of the necessary tools to put ourselves in a position to move ahead and be responsible for the environmental protection and going through all the processes. So there may have been mistakes made in the past, I can't speak to those, but we can definitely learn from them. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.