Thanks, Madam Chair. I think it's important that the public realize this is a very important debate that we are about to have. It's a debate about the future of the Northwest Territories. It's a debate about infrastructure projects and people.
What this motion is about is deleting from the supplement appropriations $10 million that has not been previously authorized for work on the Slave Geological Province road. I fully understand that this is 75 percent federal funding. I understand that this is part of a larger project and that the estimated costs are $1 billion or more to actually build the project. I raised numerous concerns about this in the last Assembly, around a whole variety of issues and matters, and I have talked about those with my colleagues when we were developing our priorities. I talked about it during the mandate, and I am talking again about it here today. We have to make hard decisions, and that is why people elect us to this House, is to make those kinds of decisions.
My position has always been clear, that I will put people over large infrastructure projects, investment in people over large infrastructure projects. I have always asked for detailed analyses of economic costs, benefits, and value for money around these infrastructure projects, and I have never gotten it. I understand that some of this expenditure may be for that work, but I think we need to have the debate and discussion now around whether this is the right path to start to go down and whether we want to continue to spend money developing this particular project. What we are being asked to do is authorize $2.5 million of our own money for next year, but that is just the beginning, where this is $10 million over four years.
In my view, the more time and effort that we continue to spend on this particular project, it takes away from work we can and should be doing on other projects, namely housing. That, to me, has always been one of my highest priorities. It's what I hear from my constituents. That is why I am here. By continuing to spend money on this project, it is taking away from our ability and efforts to do other projects, whether it's housing, whether it's healthcare, whether it's education. Unfortunately, we have never had, sort of, the analysis about, if we had $1 billion to spend, where would we get the biggest bang for our buck? What I do know is that the economic multipliers used by the Northwest Territories Bureau of Statistics will show you that investment in health and education creates way more jobs than investment in mining and non-renewable resource development. That's not me saying it; that's the Bureau of Statistics.
One of the reasons that I have expressed a lot of concern about this project is the state of the Bathurst caribou herd, and make no mistake about it, this road, as planned, will go through the range of the Bathurst caribou herd. The planning to date has been to maximize access to mineral deposits. I asked very clearly on the floor of the House how the routing was being designed, and so on. I was told that it was being done to maximize access to mineral resources. There has been no consideration whatsoever given to caribou and their habitat. We still don't have a fully funded plan to help the Bathurst caribou herd recover. I will say that we do have a range plan that has finally been approved; it has not been fully funded. I have kept asking on the floor of this House, "Where is the work on habitat protection?" That has not been done, and we need a much more balanced approach on that. Quite frankly, I would take the $2.5 million from this and spend it on other things, including habitat protection.
I think the other issue that this project raises is one of priorities, in terms of even our own infrastructure. In the last government, they had an opportunity to submit a number of projects to the National Trade Corridors program, including the Frank Channel Bridge. The previous Cabinet decided that the Slave Geological Province road was a higher priority than the Frank Channel Bridge. That, to me, Madam Chair, was the wrong set of priorities. I will always put public safety over a large infrastructure project. This money can and should have gone to do work on the Frank Channel Bridge.
I want to say one more thing about this, Madam Chair, and it comes from the economic analysis report that was done in March of last year by the Department of Infrastructure. It was not given to the MLAs of the day. We were not told about it, but it is available on the Department of Infrastructure website. The assumptions used were that, even during the engineering and professional services stage of this project, 66 percent of the labour work to be done is going to be imported. Even the $2.5 million that we're going to put in here, two thirds of that is not going to stay in the Northwest Territories; it's going to go elsewhere. At no stage in the Slave Geological Province road, from design, construction, right to actual mining, will any more than 50 percent of those jobs actually stay in the Northwest Territories. If we spend a billion dollars on housing, I would tell you that a lot more of those jobs would stay in the Northwest Territories; or on health, education, you name it. Those are the kinds of priorities that I came here with.
Lastly, I want to say, Madam Chair, that I just simply believe that we cannot afford to build this project, even if it was the right thing to do. We cannot afford it as a government. We're very close to the debt wall. This would require extraordinary borrowing or increasing our borrowing limit. I just don't think that we can afford this, nor can we afford to do three infrastructure projects, the big three, at the same time. I think we are fooling ourselves, we're fooling the people of the Northwest Territories, if we continue to try to tell them that we're going to do these three large infrastructure projects all at the same time.
Madam Chair, this is a very, very important debate that we are about to have, and it's the first time that we have had this debate in public about what our priorities are going to be, moving forward, as a government and about this particular project. I encourage all of my colleagues to think carefully about what they're going to say and where they want to stand on this issue. Madam Chair, I request a recorded vote. Mahsi.
Thanks, Madam Chair. I do sincerely want to thank all my colleagues in this House for the debate that we've had. I think this is probably the most important debate that we've had since we've been elected. Unfortunately, it comes at not the greatest time, with a number of other things looming in the background for us, of course.
First off, I want to make it very clear that this motion is not about the other projects that are in the supplementary appropriation. I support the other work that's in here for Inuvik, and I've always been very clear about that. This is about this one part, and it's about removing the funding in the supplementary appropriation for the Slave Geological Province Road.
This is a debate about the future of the Northwest Territories, and the vision that we'll have. We don't all share the same vision, and that's the way it should be. That's part of consensus government, as well. If the only future that we have is pinning all of our hopes on this one project, I wouldn't do it this way. This is about more of the same. This is more about an extraction-based economy moving forward. As my colleague from Yellowknife Centre said, we're not ready for that. Even after devolution, we're not ready for it. We haven't put in place the kinds of systems to make sure that we truly benefit from this scale of resource development. Thirty billion dollars' worth of diamonds have left the Northwest Territories; $30 billion worth. We have a heritage fund that's $26 million. We've done a terrible job in terms of distribution of the benefits from diamond mining across generations, across the Northwest Territories. We have not done a good job. I look forward to working with all of my colleagues of this House to make sure that we change that, that we need to change that, and we need to do that now. It should have been started four years ago. It should have been started 20 years ago, but it didn't, and I'm worried that we're going to fall into the same traps again.
You can look at how Nunavut has approached the federal government, and the kind of relationships that they have developed. Nunavut got a lot more money for housing because, when they went to Ottawa, they talked about housing. That's not what the government did in the last Assembly. They went and talked about big infrastructure projects, and we got dribs and drabs of money, but Nunavut got more money than we did around housing, and that's what I hoped I could encourage our Cabinet to do, the same thing. When they go to Ottawa, housing has to be a top priority, and I think we started to see some evidence of that.
People say that I'm anti-development, and I know I'm going to get criticized for some of the things that I've said here today. I'm not. Our job is to make sure that, when there is resource development, we actually benefit from it. We have to make wise decisions around the priorities, even priorities amongst the three infrastructure projects that were identified when we set the priorities in the mandate. If it was up to me, I would finish the Mackenzie Valley Highway. That's the project that makes most sense. It connects communities, and, if it's done at a scale and pace so that communities can actually benefit from it, given their labour capacity, labour force, that is what I think we can and should be doing.
This project is speculative at best. I understand my colleague from Yellowknife North. This is about getting more information. It is, but I'm just not sure we want to start down that road, so to speak. An example of that is the Mackenzie Valley Highway, which has been in an environmental assessment for six years because it was not well defined. The government leap-frogged ahead and started to do the environmental assessment work before they'd finished the planning work, before they'd lined up the funding. It's been mired in environmental assessment for six years. That is what is going to happen with the Slave Geological Province Road if we don't have the funding lined up, and we don't. I'm just not sure why we want to start to spend money on that right now.
Some people have talked about how the $2.5 million is a small investment. It's actually not a small investment. That is a quarter of the entire amount that we have to invest in the mandate for this year. It is significant. That is a lot of money. Today, people are going to make the conscious choice of whether they want to spend it on an environmental assessment for a road or other priorities that we have. That is the decision we are being asked to make here today.
The other couple of things, lessons learned that I want to take away, and I am talking to my Cabinet colleagues in particular, is: you haven't done a good job selling these large infrastructure projects with this side of the House. I think that is shown in the division that we are going to get with the vote here today. You haven't done a good job explaining what those projects are all about, the cost, the benefits, and whether we can afford them or not. People on our side, we need to hold you accountable to that and get better information out of you.
I think that's all I wish to say, Madam Chair. I had requested a recorded vote. As I said, I think this is probably the most important debate that we have had in this House since we have been elected. I know it doesn't come at the best time, so I want to apologize to everybody for putting them through this. This is something we have to do. We have to stand up and be counted, and our residents need to know where we stand on these issues. Thanks, Madam Chair.
The Member for Frame Lake, the Member for Yellowknife Centre, the Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.
Thank you. All those opposed.
The Member for Kam Lake, the Member for Yellowknife North, the Member for Monfwi, the Member for Nahendeh, the Member for Yellowknife South, the Member for Sahtu, the Member for Range Lake, the Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, the Member for Hay River North, the Member for Hay River South, the Member for Thebacha, the Member for Nunakput.
Abstentions. None. The motion is carried -- defeated. Sorry.
---Laughter
It's a long day, sorry. It's Friday, the 13th. All right, we will be moving on now. Committee, we had three in favour, 12 opposed, no abstentions. The motion was defeated.
---Defeated
I will now go back to 2020-2021 Supplementary Estimates No. 1, Infrastructure Expenditures, infrastructure, capital investment expenditures, asset management, not previously authorized, $10 million. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
All right. Let's move on to 2020-2021 Supplementary Estimates No. 1, Infrastructure Expenditures, infrastructure, capital investment expenditures, programs and services, not previously authorized, $18,658,000. Questions? Seeing no further questions, does committee agree?
Agreed.
Okay. 2020-2021 Supplementary Estimates No. 1, Infrastructure Expenditures, infrastructure, capital investment expenditures, total department, not previously authorized, $28,658,000. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you. Does committee agree that you have concluded the consideration of Tabled Document 43-19(2), Supplementary Estimates (Infrastructure Expenditures), No. 1, 2020-2021?
Agreed.
Thank you, Minister, and thank you to the witness. You may escort the witness out of the Chamber. Does committee agree that this concludes consideration of Tabled Document 43-19(2), Supplementary Estimates (Infrastructure Expenditures), No. 1, 2020-2021?
Agreed.
Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.
Sorry. Did you call the page, Madam Chair? Give me a moment, please.
Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.
