Floyd Roland

Mr. Speaker, under 23(j), once again, I’ve been accused of uttering a falsehood. The Member said that the banks are solely responsible. You can look at Hansard. I’ve not said that. So my point of order is that the Member is, again, accusing me of lying to this Assembly. In fact, lying to this Assembly is as good as putting my head on a platter.

Mr. Speaker, I want Members to be aware of the insinuations being made here. In fact, adding wording that has not been said and I have not said…. I’m speaking to this piece. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, we must be careful what we say in this House. I mean, some Members have come up with their own figure of what this potentially costs. The $242 million figure is someone else’s math work. What we’ve put on the table is the total amount of $165 million. The tolls will pay a significant portion of that. As the act itself identified, we would be taking funds from the ice crossing and the ferries going up to close to $2 million. The FMB of the day agreed to a further extension of $2.28 million as a ceiling for putting this in, based on the dollar values of when that agreement was put...

Mr. Speaker, yes, I do.

Mr. Speaker, the Ministers would work through their department, if it is work on behalf of the department — and I’d have to get a specific example. But through a department, the department can initiate that activity from direction given by the Minister, so I don’t get to review all of those areas for consulting contracts.

Mr. Chairman, the motion calls for the elimination of this one project. We have to remind ourselves of the fire season. The further north you go, there may still be some snow, but in the southern parts of the Territory the environment does dry out sooner. If we start dealing with this later on in the season — in fact, we will be in full summer season, and we put crews in place the 1st of May — this area can be considered as an ounce of prevention, in a sense. If we are unable to properly see where lightning strikes are hitting in the Northwest Territories, it delays the reaction time for those...

I have to go to the Minister Responsible for ENR for detail on that project.

This budget item deals with the bridge program that has been partnered with the federal government and G.N.W.T. Department of Transportation and has been in progress for a number of years. It addresses crossings of the creeks and rivers up in the Sahtu area, so it doesn’t include the ice roads up in the Beaufort-Delta.

Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Speaker, as I’ve sat here and listened intently, I’m sure they wouldn’t want to be brought up to this floor with next year’s public accounts or contracts over $5,000 and be reminded of that.

It is something we are looking at, as well as departmental travel.

Mr. Speaker, I’m very familiar with that one, so I can inform the Member and this House about that process.

In trying to establish a contract with a firm, looking at what kind of work you want done and what you’re hoping to get the message out and the delivery on, in those cases one would approach — in my case, anyway — the Premier of the day to ask for advice in this area regarding the work that’s going to be undertaken.

In some cases that type of investment produces a much bigger benefit. If we want to get into that, I can talk about the $50 million it’s saved us as the Government of the...