Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as we listened to the large amount of media coverage this morning on the Deh Cho Bridge on CBC Radio this morning, Mr. Ramsay was in for an interview, we heard the Minister’s comments in the media scrum after the House session on Friday, and I’ve been struggling and thinking, you know, what can we do to bring some more, I guess, transparency and accountability to this whole issue of the Deh Cho Bridge.
As my husband and I listened to the news this morning, Rick, who’s not known to be the politician in the family, suggested, he said, isn’t this the first time you’ve actually had to vote money on this project, and I said, yeah, it is. Since we passed that Deh Cho Bridge Corporation Act in the 14th Assembly, this is the first time that we’ve actually been called upon to vote on money related to this bridge project in the form of what will be a supplementary appropriation request for $15 million to address the cost overruns because of the many changes. He said this is the opportunity, this is your chance to get the government to provide very precise and accurate accounting about some of the things we’ve wondered about for a long time. When we agreed to the loan guarantees -- and that’s what
they were, they were not expenditures, they were guarantees at the time for getting this project planning done and underway -- each time when we would try to inquire about where the money was being expended, for what went up to be loan guarantees in the neighbourhood of $9 million, we were always told, of course, that the money was being spent by the proponent, which was the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation, not by our government. So the normal level of financial reporting was not there out of respect for the proprietors who are the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation.
So here as we, Mr. Speaker, have an opportunity coming up where, in fact, we do have to vote money to cover these overruns, I think it would be really good for the government to get very busy trying to account to us how much has been spent on this project. I’m particularly interested in the workers within the Department of Transportation themselves, how much of their time, energy and effort has gone to work on this particular file. So that’s what I will be seeking. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.