Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks, committee, for allowing me to make a few comments on the Deh Cho Bridge.

First of all, I guess, in hindsight, if we knew what it was going to cost, we would have built it in 1958 when the project was priced at $6.2 million and we wouldn’t be at this juncture.

Mr. Chairman, first of all I have to point out that I don’t think that anybody is happy with the news that the project has a cost overrun of $15 million. We certainly didn’t want to be in the position to come and request additional funding. It is unfortunate but it is a reality.

Mr. Chairman, it is also unfortunate that a project that we put a lot of faith in as a P3 type of project that had a self-generating portion to it is being viewed in such a negative light. I certainly agree that we have to build the public confidence that this $15 million is going to cover, as some of the Members stated, all the past claims, the costs of the new design and the construction costs to complete the new bridge. We have made a lot of changes, we have changed the project management team and we certainly want to confirm to the Members that we have a new team that can manage the project effectively along with our people, our own Department of Transportation people and people who have the proper credentials. The ability to cripple the government is always a concern. It has been there from day one and we certainly recognize that. We want to be able to relay as much information, to give comfort to all the Members on the table as it was put.

We agree that projects of any given size and nature should, if the opportunity is there, go to a public tender. This time we did not have the time. We were informed that we were not going to be able to make an arrangement with the prior contractor at the end of December. We had a milestone to meet, two milestones to meet, first of all to have all design completed by the 29th of January and another one

to complete that we still have to focus on and try to ensure that we have all the ingredients right is the March 1 deadline to have a contractor and a plan to go forward. Given the timeline and the costs that were of concern, we decided to go with this company and we recognize the contractors, the company that is calling, at least Mr. Ramsay certainly has been calling us and has been quite

agitated and has said some very negative things; however, the decision is to move forward.

We are providing a timeline for the project and we expect that over the life of this project, we will recover the $15 million. We have a new contractor, new design, new project management. The project is currently 50 percent complete. We have eight piers that will be done within the next week or so. We are looking at this project to roughly cost us about $8 million per year to finance and half of that will be raised through tolls. Two million dollars of that is money that we are already spending on operating the ferry at Fort Providence crossing and also for construction of the ice bridge. Granted there is a subsidy portion to this, it is $2 million per year; $2 million worth of subsidy on an annual basis.

We are seeking the supplementary funding through known channels. We are following the process agreed to in the Concession Agreement. The extra funding will get us to the finish line on the bridge project and we certainly have to look at other projects as we go forward, if there are opportunities to move forward with a portion that could be self-generating.

The Bear River Bridge has been raised, of course, by Mr. Yakeleya on a number of occasions. In that case, the situation is slightly different and the project didn’t qualify for funding that we expected to realize. The Mackenzie Valley Road is another one that we have to look at with great seriousness and, Mr. Chairman, I say this because many people have pointed to the cost-benefit analysis that has been done by our government, our department, which pointed out that there will be a negative cost benefit to this project. But at the same time, we should recognize that we probably don’t have any projects on our books or that have been done in the history of this government that has had a positive cost-benefit analysis.

The irony of this is that initially when the $65 million project came forward for the Deh Cho Bridge, it was one of the few projects that had a positive cost-benefit analysis and if we are going to use that as a deciding factor, then we will not move forward on any other projects, including the Mackenzie Valley Highway, because we are not going to see a positive cost-benefit analysis on that project.

We have to face the fact that we are a government and we build projects, we build infrastructure that nobody else is going to build. In this case, we have a cost overrun of $15 million that has a recovery mechanism, it has self-liquidating provisions in the agreement and we need to move forward to conclude this project, finish this Deh Cho Bridge. I think that everybody would agree that they would like to see this crossing completed.

Will we look back and see there are lessons to be learned? Absolutely. We want to be able to look at

the whole concept of P3. We want to be able to see where things went wrong, where things could have been done better, where the government maybe could make provisions to insert themselves a little easier or quicker. There are a number of things, but, Mr. Chairman, the bottom line is, and the reality is, there is a cost overrun.

The project was decided some time ago that it was a good one for economic reasons, for environmental reasons, for safety reasons and a lot of those reasons are still there. I think we have to continue moving forward on this project. I thank all the Members for their comments; I certainly appreciate it. Thank you.