Thank you, Mr. Chairman, this particular bridge has to be built. The reasons not to build it just don’t make sense anymore, especially when you have pillars in the Mackenzie River, you have projects, you have about eight pillars there to finish it off.
Mr. Chair, the issue that I have is with the management of the project. With the additional $15 million to this project you really question the control and the management team and the previous arrangements in regard to how this happened in that this is so high and we really were asleep at the wheel on this one in terms of the money that’s coming forward. Now, I’m going to ask that in the future we have some good people on it that will take care of the project.
Mr. Chairman, the issue I have that rubs against my support somewhat is the issue of our request in terms of seeking a bridge in the Sahtu, the Bear River Bridge. There was cost escalation and there were all kinds of things that we just couldn’t put a bridge on the Bear River. When we have a bridge here that’s in a huge cost overrun, I don’t know quite all the insights to it, but we’re having a request coming like that to support, but they couldn’t get support in the Sahtu for the Bear River Bridge. It doesn’t sound very good when you’re out in the Sahtu region for our bridge.
However, I know that this bridge needs to be built, should be built and maybe there should be a different name for the bridge here: the Could Have, Should Have, Would Have Bridge, you know? Deh Cho in our language means big spirit or in English it means big river; but the true meaning of Deh Cho means big spirit, if you know our language.
As I said before, Mr. Chair, I have talked to several elders and one or two here in the House, in Fort Providence and the elders stopped in the hallway and said you have to support us because we want to build a bridge. When an elder talks to you, you have to listen to what they’re saying. So that’s why I’m following his words in my support for this. Otherwise, it would be a different story I would be talking about.
Mr. Chair, the bridge here is a significant infrastructure piece in the Northwest Territories, but probably on a larger scale the federal government is going to say, well, it’s probably a $200 million bridge and yet you guys want to build a $1.8 billion road and you can’t even get a bridge right and in place. So it has a lot of things in terms of significant play at a larger level.
We have to give support to the Minister to do this and get it done. Like Mrs. Groenewegen, the MLA for Hay River, said, hopefully when we are resting and retiring, that our grandchildren can go across the bridge and say thank God this bridge was built. Only history will tell.
There’s more to write about this bridge and this is only probably the second volume. There are a lot of hard lessons to be learned and I hope the government employees are taking these lessons how not to how to. It’s very important, Mr. Chair. The Members brought up some really good points here. Don’t take them lightly. They brought up some very good points here of how to do business in terms of this bridge. So in saying that, hopefully we can also get some attention in terms of the Bear River Bridge one day.
I wanted to also say that this piece of infrastructure is going to be finalized. It’s the YK bypass road here in the Kam Lake area from the airport. That’s really important infrastructure because of the safety issues, very important for the people in this region, in this city. I’m glad that is going to be done.
Mr. Chair, a few more comments I have is the importance of the federal infrastructure stimulus funding and hopefully some of our communities that require attention on dust control, paving, that we have the flexibility of this government to bring paving to our communities, allocating other paving areas. I do support communities that do get this, because their people also are going to benefit. So just as much as I want to see people in the Sahtu have some paving programs in their communities so we don’t have to deal with dust every summer. In six seasons now since I’ve been here we’ve had
to deal with dust and every summer it comes up. So I hope that we have some creativity and some planning, some fortitude to say yes, people in our small communities can have a paving program.
You have lots of good people working for you, they surely must know how to work the system so we get pavement for our communities. So I ask that of the government. One of my elders who is no longer here, Chief Paul Wright, said that when you start supporting communities, hopefully you’ll get that type of support back on some big initiatives before us here in terms of the approval of this supp and going forward.
I wanted to say overall that the Deh Cho Bridge does -- and I’ll cross my fingers -- bring the benefits to people in my region, people up here. I’m not too sure; I’ll have to see for myself, I guess. But certainly, I want to say for the record, Mr. Chair, I certainly support the initiatives of people in Fort Providence, the band, the Metis, I think they had good intentions when they committed to build this. There were some questions as to the impacts of the bridge on the Mackenzie River in terms of the fish, the wildlife and there are some people that live traditionally along that community. I’m not sure what kind of impacts you’re going to have further down the river in Tulita and in the communities I represent along the Mackenzie River. Only time will tell, but I think there’s some things that I’m not aware of yet that may come to light in the next couple of weeks or days because of confidentiality issues and sensitivity to the bridge. We’re not privy to... It’s not before us right now in this House.
So I hope that once this bridge is completed, that there will be a good book written about this project and I don’t know who is going to be the author, but I say to our leaders here and on Cabinet, please pay close attention to the details of this project. Put good people on the project, let them know about funding and management and work with the people in Fort Providence.
So, Mr. Chair, that’s all I have to say in terms of this supp. Mahsi.