Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Just in follow-up, I thought of another question. I gave Mr. Ramsay quite a platform there to make his speech about his much anticipated road from Inuvik to Tuk, when I said what makes this borrowing money worthy, this particular project. A lot of the reasoning he gave could be applied to, literally, you could take and you could transpose that whole argument to Wrigley to Norman Wells. You could say the same thing. We’ve got so much activity going on in the Sahtu in the oil and gas. I mean, that’s part of the Mackenzie Highway too. It just happens to be the more southerly portion, not the more northerly portion.
I’d like to ask the Minister, are we just dancing to the tune of the federal government when it comes to the priority that’s being placed on this particular project? Again I ask, how are we going to gauge the support of Northerners, because it still will be a lot of capital, even if it’s borrowed?
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The Minister of Transportation, Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. No. It is in our best interest, as well, to see the completion of the Mackenzie Valley Highway, and it is going to start with the section between Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk. Certainly, there are other demands around the territory when it comes to transportation infrastructure that we’ll be hearing loud and clear from… I know I’ve heard from the Member for the Sahtu in his conversations with the leadership in the Sahtu about the advancement of the Mackenzie Valley Highway through the Sahtu, and south from Norman Wells or north from Wrigley or however you want to call it. That certainly will be coming into much more prominence as we move forward and development continues to take place in the Sahtu.
That’s quite an assertion on the part of our Transportation Minister to say it will be that road and we will spend money on that road. It will be. It kind of makes me wonder, you know, where we are in terms of our level of commitment on this. When we started out and it was $150 million from the feds and $50 million from our government, okay, I could see it. But we haven’t even determined what the cost of the road is yet, so how can the Minister say this will be it?
What if the road comes in at $400 million? How can the Minister make such an assertion? How does he know with such certainty?
I’m always optimistic, I guess. That would be my first response.
In response to the Member, we are going to conclude the environmental assessment. That report will come in in January. We’re also going to be getting three separate cost estimates on the project. We need to determine the funding arrangement with the federal government. There are a number of decision points here that have to be made, and they’ll be made with Members of the House, with committee, with Regular Members as we move the project forward. That’s our anticipation, is that we’re going to get that cost estimate. We’ll get the funding arrangement. We’ll know exactly what we’re going to get ourselves into and then the decision will be made.
I like that answer a little bit better, because that was my understanding when we’ve been approving these funds for the geotechnical and costing and all these things we’ve been doing. We understood that as we were approving these dollars, that $2 million, around $2 million a hit, that’s what we thought we were doing. We thought this was kind of exploratory and that if it didn’t go ahead at this time, that was still valuable information that could be used at some time in the future.
The Minister is telling us that, in fact, there are many hurdles and many questions to be answered prior to this government irrevocably committing to this project.
On a project this size, it is inevitable that, up front, you have to do that type of geotechnical analysis, and the work, the engineering has to get done to get you the cost estimates that you require. That is what we see. That is what we’ve been pursuing.
Like any other project, it requires an environmental assessment. That’s a requirement of the federal government before we can enter into a funding arrangement with the federal government. These are necessary steps that the Government of the Northwest Territories is following and we will be making a decision, based on those cost estimates, during the February/March sitting of the House.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Item 8, written questions. Item 9, returns to written questions. Item 10, replies to opening address. Item 11, petitions. Item 12, reports of standing and special committees. Item 13, reports of committees on the review of bills. Mr. Moses.
