Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I guess I’d just like to start out by applying a little bit to what Mr. McLeod had to say. I think the project did make sense when it cost $60 million and it would be self-financing. It made absolutely no sense when the government had to ante up the $2 million extra a year indexed, I must say, for the next 35 years and commit every government for the next 35 years to that expenditure. I would beg to differ with the Minister on whether the project made any sense. Also given the fact that it was a substantial negative cost-benefit to this Territory by building the bridge at $165 million. I can debate that until the cows come home with my colleagues across the floor, but that’s my belief, is that it never made any sense at that price tag.
There’s a reason. I know the previous government went to Ottawa looking for money for this project time and time again. Every time we increased the loan guarantee to the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation the former Premier said the money from the feds is being worked on, it’s going to come and the project won’t go ahead unless we get the money from the feds. I can quote him from many meetings we were at saying exactly that. The money never materialized but the project did.
The reason the federal government didn’t come to the table with any substantial infrastructure dollars on this project was twofold. One, they were planning this P3 initiative national campaign that’s started up now that we could have subscribed to had we waited a couple of years. The other thing is, I don’t believe the federal government ever believed that a bridge across the Mackenzie River to service 25,000 people was a good expenditure of public funds. And I’m just being straight up honest.
I know there are a lot of people here in Yellowknife that think we need a bridge and we want a bridge. I want a Ferrari too, but I can’t afford a Ferrari so I’m not going to go out and buy one. That’s the mentality of the last government, was we can’t afford a bridge but you know what? We’re going to go out and get this bridge anyway. No matter if we have to mortgage the future we’re going to get that bridge. That’s what we’re doing, is we’re mortgaging our future, future projects of this government for this bridge. Make no mistake about that. That’s happening.
Now, I just have a few questions here. I’d like to thank the Minister for this package of information.
Perhaps he could get us a clean copy that’s got names we can read on the project organizational chart and the Ruskin Management org chart. We can’t read the names that are on there. I’d like to get a clean copy of that.
Also, I want to talk about the project management team that the government has offered up. Has anybody on our project management team -- and I’m talking about people that are going to be available on a day-to-day basis -- had any experience building a multi-million dollar bridge across a river?