Bob Bromley

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just want to carry on a little bit on the fiscal environment that I was mentioning earlier. I want to make sure I have some things right here. Our annual payments will be about $8 million per year, including a net of about $2 million new dollars each year. After a five-year period we have federal support for extra debt. We will have paid about $40 million for a reduction in the principal of about $10 million, leaving about $150 million in principal debt on the books. Over this same period we’ll reduce our current debt, which is estimated at $215 million at the end of...

Thanks to the Minister for those comments. So in my little pea brain, the scour rocks, if they’re meant to protect the piers and they don’t it would ultimately be a safety issue. Is that a correct impression? I guess it’s particularly the safety issues which ultimately everything with this bridge seems to be, I think.

We’re developing a piece of infrastructure over a large river in an extreme environment. Are there any other safety issues that we should know about? I keep hearing about the quality of the bores and stuff like this. The Minister is looking into that. Is there anything else we...

Okay, Mr. Chairman. So I can’t get that clarification before, so I’ll speak in general terms here.

From what I’ve seen of the fiscal frameworks and projections, they were developed with densely rose-tinted glasses. They include projections that we’ve never achieved, to my knowledge. I’m wondering how many years we will be over our debt limit. I know that what was indicated in those frameworks is clearly not reality.

It speaks to the fundamental aspect that we need to know. I think we’re boxed in. We need to do this. But the most important thing to me is that we do it with a full appreciation of...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s the end of our longest annual session and we’ve debated many critical issues facing our citizens today. Now it’s time for action. I want to briefly restate my priorities on how we need to act.

The Mackenzie Gas Project can only be supported if it is made to provide sustainable social and economic benefits to NWT residents and mitigation of its social and environmental impacts. We need the input of all MLAs in developing a response to the JRP report and I am calling on the government to honour the principles of consensus government by obtaining full Assembly and...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate that response. I didn’t have anything specific in mind. It was a wide open question.

Finally, I know there is a lot of interest in this and I assume that the Minister will have some sort of consultation strategy laid out. Is the Minister meeting with groups or is that an open invitation to meet with groups and what is the best way the public can participate in this discussion?

Thank you. I appreciate the comments from the Minister. I’m simply responding to what’s in here and I’m also of the opinion that those are parallel processes. We could, you know, wait until the cows come home and do things one after the other and take forever to get this going, but I think there’s a desire to get it going quickly and effectively. So I hope we can have that discussion in parallel.

Would the Minister agree that certainly there are corporations that are typically taxed in a number of ways and that in fact a resource tax could be designed to tax the excess profit? So in other words...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the comments of the Premier. Premier, and I crystallize what I hope I made clear yesterday, it’s the frontend thinking that hasn’t been done. We’ve jumped right into this project instead of thinking about what we really need to do in the long term. The GNWT is a majority shareholder of the NWT hydro and Energy corporations and yet based on the response to earlier questions from last fall, the GNWT has never issued specific direction to guide NWT hydro corporation operations and hasn’t given specific direction to the NTPC since 2002. Can the Premier explain...

Thank you. Last week we read that the Power Corporation chair dismissed this government’s aspirations to attract Avalon Minerals secondary processing with a competitive NWT electricity source, such as the Taltson. The Premier promised that the corporation would eat those words, but it’s clear to see this corporation thinks it’s a law unto itself. Will this Minister direct that the Energy Corporation’s chair appear before standing committee to report on his strategic plan? Thank you.

Our executive must make a much greater commitment to the principles and practice of consensus government. I spend too much time calling this government to task for its habits of unilateral action, as we all do, and then trying to clean up the mess later. Work with us and we will work with you. It can’t, it obviously doesn’t, work any other way.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

WHEREAS Tabled Document 4-16(5) has been tabled in this House;

AND WHEREAS the Report of the Joint Review Panel for the Mackenzie Gas Project requires detailed consideration;

NOW THEREFORE I MOVE, seconded by the honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, that Tabled Document 4-16(5), Executive Summary of the Report of the Joint Review Panel for the Mackenzie Gas Project, be referred to Committee of the Whole for consideration.