Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Mr. Badawey.
I like the analogy that this infrastructure bank is a vehicle. I think everyone realizes that Nunavut has probably got the biggest infrastructure gap in the country. We're hoping that this is a tundra buggy, so we can get that vehicle working up north.
In regard to specific projects, I can think of three right off the top of my head that would not go ahead without the help of the infrastructure bank. I would look at the Grays Bay road and port project, the potential road, the hydro and fibre link from Manitoba to the Kivalliq region, and a hydro project in Iqaluit that uses just about half the diesel that the territory consumes to generate electricity.
One of the concerns that I'm hearing in the north is that these are new, transformative, and nation-building projects, as any projects in the north would be. When they built the railroad, they didn't have to worry about doing environmental assessments and going through the regulatory regime that's there now. It takes time and costs money to get it to a stage where the project is ready to go. The concern is that if we have this pot of money there for these projects, but there's no money to help the already cash-strapped territorial government or the Inuit organizations or the municipalities to get a proposal to the point where it's ready to be looked at, that money is just going to sit there.
I'm just wondering if there's a possibility of looking at providing some funding through here to help some of these major projects that are going to take two or three years. I heard that with Grays Bay, when they were looking at the next few years, just to get it to that stage was over $15 million.
Is there a way to support those initiatives, to get them to the stage where they are ready to go?