Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The press release on the Deh Cho Bridge last Friday capped off a depressing few days for me. I can’t say I was too surprised to learn that the bridge project is now officially over budget. Projects the size of this one often encounter delays and cost overruns, so an additional $15 million was not unexpected.

No, the depressing part for me was confirmation of my nagging doubts about the viability of the bridge project and realization that the concerns I’ve harboured about it since I began work in this Assembly two years ago were validated. I’m especially frustrated because I, Members of this

Assembly, and the residents of the NWT inherited the Deh Cho Bridge Project without input. I came in after the fact, a concession agreement having been signed three days before the 2007 elections, a project management team set in place prior to the same election, financial guarantees agreed to long before I came into this job.

I’ve never felt comfortable with the process used to establish this project. It certainly was not open and transparent. The government placed a huge trust in a third-party organization and along with that trust willingly set up itself and the residents of the NWT as the financial backstop for a very expensive project.

I consider myself an optimist. It’s my nature to think the best of people and things. I had high hopes for the bridge project and its management that things would work out, that given time the corporation would prove itself competent and in doing so bring the project to completion successfully. Now my hopes are dashed. I feel like some unseen hand has stuck me with a raw deal. I feel like I’ve been backed into a corner and left with no options for a way out.

The extra project costs will impact the government’s financial bottom line and we can potentially end up with responsibility for the bridge loan. But it is by no means the end of the world. With the government now more in control of the project we can minimize future risks and hopefully further costs. However, I, like some of my colleagues, fully expect we’ve not seen the last of cost overruns for this project.

Of paramount importance for this Assembly now is to ensure two things happen:

One, there must be an audit of the whole bridge affair. From inception to today we have to determine and document how things were set in place; what decisions were made, when, and by whom; what actions were taken, when, and by whom; and we must tally all the costs that have been incurred, including in-kind costs which are the result of work done by GNWT staff, the many, many hidden person hours spent on this project.

I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.

---Unanimous consent granted.