Thank you, Mr. Chairman. At the risk of repeating some of what I’ve heard, I think for many aspects of this project many Members are on the same wavelength. I can’t believe even our government members here are feeling particularly good about this situation.
I think our first failure, in my mind, was the inability or lack of success at getting the government to determine what it would cost us to buy our way out of this project in the early days of the Assembly, as many of us explicitly and repeatedly requested. Nevertheless, we didn’t do that. We went forward and sure enough we’re where many feared we would be.
As we’ve heard, this project has both a checkered technical history as well as political history. I know amongst the public certainly, and among some MLAs, the concerns persist that the technical aspects have not been fully resolved and are we further buying a pig in a poke here with approval in going forward with this.
I guess I want to know that with the new managers we have now hired, technical people and project managers, will we start with a thorough examination of the work done to date, both onsite physical inspections, technical, almost forensic inspections, as well as the inspections of documentation to assure that indeed what we have to go forward with is sound. That will be a very important aspect to the foundation for both this Assembly and members of the public. So I would expect that would be done and that would be reported back to both the public and to Members of the Assembly.
The questions remain on what the role of the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation will be in the future. I think this needs to be resolved in a way that will not add to costs. If we can go forward without them playing a role and perhaps work with them in other ways that are productive and keep costs down, that’s something that I think we should entertain out of belated responsibility here again to our public and our taxpayers. I’d also like to see an assessment along with this appropriation of what our actual internal costs have been, and continue to be, and are projected to be. I’d like to see that reported again in the same way.
I’m wondering if I could ask a quick question before I go further here. Are the fiscal frameworks and projections that have been provided to us in committee, is that something we can speak to specifically?