Michael McLeod

Mr. Speaker, it is not at all unusual for a company to have further discussions with our government if there is an area that needs clarification or further discussion.

I am pleased to rise today and extend my very best wishes to the 350 athletes, coaches and managers who will make up Team NWT at the 2008 Arctic Winter Games being held here in Yellowknife from March 9 to 15.

For nearly a year now young people from across the Northwest Territories have been preparing themselves physically and mentally for this opportunity. They have been challenged along the way through regional and Territorial selections in order to achieve their goal of representing the Northwest Territories at this prestigious international celebration of sport and culture.

I congratulate all...

I’ve already committed to meeting with one of the communities in the Member’s riding. It wouldn’t take a whole lot more effort to meet with the Member in the other community he represents, Fort Resolution. We’d be glad to talk about budgeting and being able to redirect financing and things of that nature with the communities, along with the Member.

Mr. Speaker, I think we’re starting to see some of that already. Today the federal government announced that they’d like to move forward with the Kakisa Bridge, something that’s in our interim appropriation, so we’re quite excited about that. I’m already getting the sense that we’re campaigning for projects in the different ridings.

Mr. Speaker, we fully expect to have and be able to have some discussion with my cabinet colleagues and also the Regular Members. Sometime in mid-March for sure, if we’re going to do anything this year, we’ll have to have them approve it in the main. That will be...

Mr. Speaker, we have a two-phase process that’s identified for the initiatives under the Building Canada plan. The first phase was signed off today, and that includes the amount of money we’d be receiving through this fund and also a commitment for ongoing investment in the gas tax program. The next step will be to sign off on the financial agreement, and we expect that to start taking place. We have identified the areas that the investments will be required in, and those are the areas of transportation and municipal governments or communities.

On the municipal side we’ve started the discussion...

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I have to correct the Member: we were the ones pitching the concept of bundling the project. We had serious problems attracting people to bid on these projects when they were put out on individual tenders. The costs that did come in on some of these other projects that are a concern to us were very high. We went to the communities. We sought out a company to give us a feasibility study on this concept, and we presented it to cabinet and decided to go on an open call for, first of all, a request for qualifications. We had five companies respond. We went to the next...

Mr. Speaker, I’ll have to inform the Member again that he’s not correct in assuming that the water plant contract has been awarded. Negotiations are still ongoing. There has been a company that has responded to our request for proposals that has contracted with us prior to this and along the same lines as what we have through our requests for proposals in dealing with water plants.

Mr. Speaker, it’s difficult to understand what the Member is asking.

This process that was undertaken was approved by cabinet. It was also presented to the Association of Municipalities, and we got a letter of support from every community involved. I think there has been a lot of awareness and a lot of support for the process that we've embarked on to try to get these water plants in the communities.

I’m trying to get on with it. We are quite excited about this new concept of bundling projects. We think we have to be creative and innovative as we move forward with some of our challenges facing some of our communities in terms of providing infrastructure. Designing, implementing, operating and all those things are some things that are challenging every community in terms of capacity and getting these projects underway.

This is a new way of doing business. I can understand some Members being concerned. However, negotiations are ongoing. The project hasn’t been signed off yet; we haven’t made...

Mr. Speaker, we made a commitment to the Members, we made a commitment to the community leaders, and we made a commitment to the Members of this House.

Our process, we’re very confident, is fair. Our process has the equivalent of a fairness commissioner. We have a review team and an independent evaluator. I think we’ve taken all the precautions we need to take and even gone further because of so many concerns raised. We include the Department of Justice; we include the Department of Health; we include the people from FMB, MACA, Public Works. So I’m very confident that there is a very fair...