David Ramsay

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Your committee has been considering Bill 19, Appropriation Act, 2005-2006, and Committee Report 9-15(3), and would like to report progress with one motion being adopted. Mr. Speaker, I move that the report of Committee of the Whole be concurred with.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the Minister of Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development about a consultant that the diamond projects division has in Europe, whose reason for being is to try to achieve our goal of more northern employees in the secondary diamond industry and also to increase the potential of the Northwest Territories as a diamond centre. Mr. Speaker, I could speak of him by name, but I won’t in the House. I am sure the Minister knows who I am talking about, but it is at a substantial cost to this government. If we are not receiving a benefit...

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Ms. Lee. Ms. Melhorn; sorry.

Is that a motion?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d like to start by congratulating the Minister for a fine budget address yesterday and the presentation of the budget that was conducted yesterday. I know both the Finance Minister and the Premier and the rest of Cabinet have worked very hard over the course of the last year to try to make do with what we have and also to secure some additional funding from the federal government. I applaud their efforts in that and look forward to perhaps working with them going forward to secure more of that funding, especially in terms of the resource revenue sharing, which, as...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my underlying theme here is the Government of the Northwest Territories did not have to look at losing millions of dollars. I wonder if the Finance Minister today could make a commitment to try to find out exactly what went wrong with this deal and why the Government of the Northwest Territories is going to be on the hook for millions of dollars in this deal.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Again, I find it really difficult to imagine how the world’s largest diamond manufacturer could not meet the standards set out by one of our northern producers. Nobody seems to know what the Leviev Group was asking or what BHP was willing to give up. Nobody really knows. BHP says one thing, Leviev says another, and the Finance Minister can’t say anything. Where are these diamonds coming from? They are coming out of our territory here. I think we have an obligation to try to get to the bottom of this. We are losing millions of dollars, Mr. Speaker. We don’t know what...