Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the committee today would like to deal with Tabled Document 8-16(5), Supplementary Appropriation No. 2, 2010-2011 (Infrastructure Expenditures).

Does committee agree?

With that, we’ll take a short break and begin with Tabled Document 8-16(5), Supplementary Appropriation No. 2, 2010-2011 (Infrastructure Expenditures).

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I would like to call Committee of the Whole back to order. Prior to the break we began with Tabled Document 8-16(5), Supplementary Appropriation No. 2, 2010-2011 (Infrastructure Expenditures). With that, I would like to ask the Premier if he has any opening comments. Mr. Premier.

Thank you, Mr. Premier. At this time I would like to ask the Premier if he will be bringing in any witnesses. Mr. Premier.

Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Does the committee agree that the Premier brings in his witnesses?

Sergeant-at-Arms, please escort the witnesses in.

Mr. Premier, can you introduce your witnesses for the record.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Joining me at the table to my right is the deputy minister of Finance, Ms. Margaret Melhorn; to my immediate left is Minister Michael McLeod, Minister of Transportation; to my far left is Mr. Russell Neudorf, deputy minister of Transportation. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Premier. Welcome, witnesses. General comments. Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First off, I do support the principle of the bridge project. I certainly believe strongly that this is the type of infrastructure that needs to be built in the Northwest Territories. I also believe strongly when I had asked last month about why haven’t we sought federal government support, why hasn’t the federal government come to the table to assist us with this project. I think that seems to be a significant gap in this process that has been happening.

Today I tabled an article from a magazine called Bridge Design and Engineering. It is a magazine from the UK. It defines itself as the definitive publication for bridge professionals worldwide and they do sort of an overview of the Deh Cho Bridge, oddly enough. It is an article called Remote Control, which I am still trying to figure out why they called the Deh Cho Bridge article a remote control. But what was interesting and stunning about this overview is it highlights a particular section of interest. It says, an independent review of the original superstructure which was done by TY Lin International identified that there were numerous deficiencies and felt that the bridge was deemed unbuildable.

Mr. Chairman, I think that really starts towards the beginning of the problem, which is ultimately the government in the 15th Assembly went forward,

signed a bridge agreement, as we have all heard. It was a fixed price, fixed contract and completed design and yet that seems to be where the real problem started. I am not talking about the decision to do the bridge or not. I mean, that is a different issue altogether. Ultimately, once we were albatrossed with the deal, there seems to be problems from the bridge outwards and they just haven’t stopped.

Mr. Chairman, my opening comments are more reflective as to what are we doing with respect to stuff like that. TY Lin International is a significant corporation that reviewed the bridge. It is an extremely strong statement to say that the original bridge was unbuildable. A company doesn’t make

that type of statement willy-nilly, if I may put it as simply as that.

I am kind of wondering if our government is pursuing the original bridge design or some of these costs. I think some of the costs have all been associated to the fact that the bridge was designed poorly and it was sold in a context that it was a complete design ready to go for a fixed price.

Mr. Chairman, at this point, that is really where my concern will start. Although I have a number of concerns as we go through this process, I am sure that they will all come to light through that.

I would like to hear more about how the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation will be involved and what role they will play. I would like to hear more from the Minister when we get into this concession agreement and how will it be inactive when it relates to the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation.

One of the things I did was when I pulled the Deh Cho Bridge Act the other day, I was curious to find out if any of the regulations at this point have been drawn up. If they had been drawn up, I certainly would like to hear a little more about that.

Mr. Chairman, just for opening comments, I think my real concern will begin with the fact that an independent review had, I think, hit the nail right on the head, which is the fact that this government accepted a contract, signed a contract on good faith that the bridge was a complete bridge ready to go and we find out later it was not. We spent a lot of time, a lot of delays associated with money and a lot of frustration that was caused throughout this House.

I still believe in the bridge project in principle. I think that it will provide a significant legacy infrastructure for this Territory that I do believe needs to be built. I wonder if one of our fundamental problems have to do with the design of the bridge and us accepting that contract under that theoretic good faith that it was ready to go. I would certainly hope that either the Minister of Transportation or, of course, the Premier, who is acting on behalf of the Finance Minister I believe, will assure me that our government is taking appropriate steps to pursue the original bridge designer, who I think is one of the fundamental problems of this.

Notwithstanding that, I certainly think that the price our government did sign on to this project was certainly outrageous and there certainly could have been more ways to work this project. Setting the size and the price of the bridge aside, it really comes down to the bridge being designed with significant fault and are we pursuing that at this time. I’ll leave that as opening comments. I will certainly have questions as we proceed through.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’ll be happy to provide some opening comments on the Supplementary Appropriation No. 2 that’s before us. I’m having a great deal of difficulty with supporting this. I’ll say that up front. I have been critical of the project from the very beginning. I mentioned earlier today in my Member’s statement that I just see one bad decision being compounded by another bad decision. For the life of me I cannot understand why we’re not going to complete an audit of the project. That is going through the books of the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation, going through all the records of the engineers, getting a full stock of where we’ve been in an effort to try to move forward.

I’m not interested in going back in time and going over who did what and when, and playing pin the blame on the donkey. I’m not trying to do that. What we have to do is try to move the project forward in a coordinated way. I know the Department of Transportation is committed to doing that. You see the project management team that’s been assembled. It’s a comprehensive one. It’s a good one. It is a good team. But in saying that it’s a good team, why wouldn’t we, when a project is basically stopped midway...and I debated this with the Minister who says it’s 50 percent done, but I don’t quite agree with that. I don’t think it’s close to 50 percent. When a project is stopped mid-stroke you should at the very least find out how you got to where you got to before you enter into any contract and commit any more public dollars to a project like the Deh Cho Bridge Project.

Why we would be in such a rush to get into a sole-sourced negotiated contract with one company, again, for the life of me, I do not understand. I mentioned it earlier and that’s probably why I’m not going to end up supporting this, because on principle I think it has to go through a complete audit. We have to get a handle on where it’s been in order to move it forward. I don’t see it happening and I don’t understand how you can do an audit with one hand and sign a contract with another hand and the new contractor try to carry out the work when there’s all this other stuff hanging in the background. It’s not something I think is a good decision. With all due respect to the Minister and the government, I disagree with them 100 percent that they’re doing the right thing by negotiating a contract with one company on this bridge, given the history.

Given the history we obviously didn’t learn anything through the exercise with ATCON. That was a negotiated sole-sourced contract with ATCON as well; supposedly a fixed-price contract. It never ended up being that way and even the numbers are moving around as we speak. The numbers we talked about, and the Minister knows what those numbers are, when he came before us, there’s a difference between what we were told was going to

be signed with Ruskin and what was actually signed with Ruskin. There’s a bit of a difference there. And that all happened in the past couple of weeks. What work is that for? Is that for work that we have already supposedly paid for? I think it’s for the approaches or the abutments.

Again, things are just changing. For me what this exercise is going to be about is trying to get some things lined up and try to get a chronology of events of when things were said, when things happened, and try to make some sense of it. Right now I’m at a bit of a loss as to why some things are said when they’re said and why other things are left out or omitted when I believe the government knew full well what was going on and didn’t divulge that to Regular Members.

Now, interestingly, I had some questions for the Minister of Transportation earlier about the lenders and the more I think about it, when the lenders gave the Government of the Northwest Territories, through the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation, access to that construction account to the tune of about $75 million, they did so because they were interested in seeing the project move forward, like us. It was a good relationship. That relationship soured at some point in time. The lenders got so that they locked that construction account up in December of last year. No money was flowing out of that construction account. When they write letters -- I’m not sure who the letter went to, the Minister of Transportation, the Premier, or the Finance Minister – to our government, you can rest assured that somewhere in those letters it just doesn’t say N-O, you’re not getting any more money. It should specify exactly the reasons why the lenders do not want to proceed with lending money out of that construction account. I would like to at some point in time see the letters that we got back from the lenders and see exactly what they say. I think those letters would probably paint a pretty good picture of why the lenders were getting scared. Did the government act when they should have acted? Did they wait?

Here we are, it’s almost April and the big reason why the government didn’t want to go to tender on the second half of this project was all about timing. They always said it would set the project back a year. I don’t buy that it’s going to set the project back a year. I think if we had gone to tender -- and Ruskin could have rightfully bid on that contract and won the contract, who knows what would have happened -- at the end of the day I could rest assured and tell my constituents that we managed the public purse the best way that we could, we went to tender, we got the best price, we had a design that was finished and we got the work done. That’s what I want to be able to tell my constituents. I can’t tell my constituents that because I know that’s not the way things happened. We negotiated a sole-sourced contract with one company. And

that number is moving. It’s a moving target. Why is it a moving target? Because I do still believe today that there are things in that design that are unfinished and are going to cost us more money as we move this project forward. I hope I’m wrong on that, I really do, but I really don’t believe that I’m going to be wrong.

I also don’t believe that the bridge is going to be constructed by November 2011. I really do not believe that. And I do not believe for one second that this bridge is going to cost the government and the taxpayers in the Northwest Territories $181 million. It is going to cost more than that. You can mark my words that it is going to cost more than that. I hope I’m wrong, but it is going to cost more than that.

There are other issues at play that I’m going to address and questions as we move forward. I want to give other Members a chance to provide some opening comments. I want to know quite specifically when the government signed a notice to award the contract to Ruskin or when the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation signed that contract, when they signed the intent to award, when they signed the notice to proceed. I want to know who signed it.

I want to know what legality the Government of the Northwest Territories has on that contract that the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation signed with Ruskin. Where do we fit in all this? I think that’s an important aspect as well. I also want to know if it’s not too late to get out, to stop what we’re doing and take stock of where we’ve been and where we need to go, and get the best price that we can. Go to the marketplace for the second half and move on. That’s what people want to see us doing. They don’t want to just see us giving out sole-sourced contracts to the closest guy there. That’s what we’re doing. It doesn’t make much sense. The only argument I can see is the fact that we might have to pay some interest, but nobody’s proven to me that going to the marketplace is going to save us $15 million or $16 million. We have to pay $8 million if it’s going to go past November 2011. That’s going to be a big issue. It’s going to go past November 2011 guaranteed. I almost guarantee you that. It’s not going to be finished by then.

I’ll have a lot of questions here and I look forward to asking them and trying to get some answers.

Next I have Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have to say that I’m a little frustrated actually being here today. I’m a little frustrated that the first time that the Members of the 16th Legislative Assembly

get to vote on anything on the bridge, the vote is such that we really don’t have a choice. We pretty much have to vote yes to this thing. If we don’t vote yes to this thing it’s still going to cost us the same or more money. The delays will actually, in my

opinion, result in far greater expenditures than the incredibly high expenditures that we’re already dealing with today. It’s frustrating and it makes me a little angry.

I think this project has been managed poorly since day one. I think the 14th Assembly made a mistake

signing the Deh Cho Bridge Act. I’m not convinced that the Deh Cho Bridge Act is a good act. If anything I hope that this Assembly and future Assemblies learn from what we’re going through today and never ever sign anything like the Deh Cho Bridge Act into existence again. It was a mistake and it’s going to cost us dearly forever.

I’m frustrated and angry that in the 15th Assembly,

in the dying days of the Assembly, the Premier rushed this thing through and signed a concession agreement. It frustrates me to no end that we got stuck with this particular construction project without some reasonable and responsible decision-making beforehand.

I’m frustrated and I’m angry that the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation, in my opinion, has mismanaged this file. They had the faith of this government at one point to take this forward and build a bridge in the Northwest Territories, one of the largest infrastructure projects in the history of the Northwest Territories and, quite frankly, I’m of the opinion that they blew it. I’m not convinced that the project management team had the skill to manage such a large infrastructure project, yet they were the ones that were in charge and we sat back and watched them move forward and fail miserably.

I’m frustrated that the information that we’ve asked for on a regular basis comes to us, the Minister seems confident with it and rightfully so, and then two weeks later he’s getting new information and as a result we’re getting new information. We weren’t getting consistent information from the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation. So I’m frustrated there as well.

And here we are today, faced with this supp that if we don’t approve it, it’s going to cost us more money in the long run. If we turn back and say to heck with the bridge, no bridge, we still have to rip those piers out of the water, put it back to the state it was in, and then there are penalties we’re going to have to pay and all sorts of things we’re going to have to pay. It’s probably going cost us more to rip that bloody thing out of the water than it is to actually go forward and finish the construction of this thing.

So here we are. We have no choice. In my opinion we have to support this supp. From what I’ve read and understand, it’s not really today if things go smoothly – and, God, let’s hope that they do -- if things go smoothly, it’s not really going to cost us any more tomorrow other than the $15 million than we had planned originally. It’s going to cost us our ferry operations, it’s going to cost us the $2 million a year, which we knew about all along, and it’s

going to cost us some operation money, which we knew about all along. I don’t see anything changing, other than the fact that now the money has to flow through us.

I think Cabinet, the Premier, the Minister, have a responsibility here to make sure that the people of the Northwest Territories understand what is happening with respect to this supp and how it’s going to impact us. Some questions have been asked earlier today and I’m glad they were asked and I’m glad they were answered. I’m not sure the answers were as clear as the people of the Northwest Territories deserve and I would like to seek some additional clarity as we move forward. I will be trying to ask the questions in a certain way that we can hopefully get some answers later on today when we get into the detail.

But to begin with, I’ve had some people talk to me about their frustration with the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation, and clearly, as you can tell, I’m frustrated with the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation. Are they going to be getting any profits out of this as we move forward? I mean, we’ve now taken over this, we’ve now taken on the debt, it’s our project, it’s our bridge. There are a lot of people who have told me that they don’t want the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation, which so brutally managed this thing to begin with, to, you know, get a significant amount of profits. I understand that they do have some equity and that there should be a little return on equity, but we should be careful how much equity or how much profit they get out of this project, because it will be offensive to a lot of people who watched this project struggle and struggle and struggle.

I want the Premier to help the people understand the real impact this could have on our borrowing limit, and there has been some suggestions or some answers to that today, but I’d like it to be broken down into as simple a language as we can so that the people really understand what this could do to our borrowing limit today, tomorrow, five years from now.

One of the most important things to me is I’m not convinced that the project management team of the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation had the skill, like I’ve said already, to manage a project of this magnitude. I want to know, and I want the Premier and the Minister to make it clear to the people of the Northwest Territories, the qualifications of our new project management team. I don’t 100 percent agree with my colleague Mr. Ramsay. I think this bridge can come in on time, and I think it can come in on the budget allocated, assuming that our project management team has the capacity, the knowledge, skills and ability to handle a megaproject of this size. I want you to tell me about our new project management team, and I want you to tell me how they meet those knowledge, skills,

abilities and qualifications to manage a project of this size. And if they do, if they are the experts that I hope they are, I believe that we can come in on budget and I believe that we can get this project done on time, because if we don’t, the ramifications are significant, as Mr. Ramsay pointed out. If we’re late, it’s a million dollars a year, $8 million a year on top of what we’re spending already. That’s very risky, and you guys don’t have a lot of time to get this done and get this done right.

I talked a little bit about the timeline. I want to know, you know, is the timeline your timeline, is the timeline the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation’s timeline, or is the timeline a new project management timeline, this new group, the Associated Engineering Group who is going to be project managing this. Is that time realistic to those experts? And if it isn’t, we need to know, and we need to know right now, because it might affect our vote on this particular supp.

I also want to know about cost control. I believe experts can probably manage the cost, but I want you to talk a little bit to us -- and I’ll be asking questions when we get into the detail -- about some of the cost control measures that are in place. How are we going to ensure that the build is managed and controlled and that the costs are managed and controlled better than they were in the past when the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation was running it, where, in my opinion, they weren’t managed all that well, otherwise we wouldn’t have had to come up with a $15 million supp on a project that had a fixed cost to begin with.

There are a lot of problems here. I’m frustrated. I’m angry that I have to vote on a supp where there’s really no choice but to support the darn thing, otherwise costs are going to flare up even higher. When we get into the detail I’m going to ask some questions, and I’d like some plain English answers for the people in the Northwest Territories who, in my opinion, deserve clear, concise answers on this bridge. Thank you.

Next I have Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, too, don’t feel that this bridge, never felt that this bridge was a benefit to anyone that I represent in this Legislative Assembly. However, from the very outset I initially believed that this government was in for the amount that was guaranteed to the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation in the concession agreement of something in the neighbourhood of $9 million to $10 million. I initially believed that. I didn’t know at the very beginning, in October 2007 when I was elected and there was discussion on the Deh Cho Bridge, that this government had guaranteed the loan of $165 million. That wasn’t made to clear, to me anyway. I don’t know how clear that was to anyone else in the House. However, to me, from

what I heard in the House, in exchanges I heard in the House, it was a $9.5 million loan guarantee was what this government was in for.

Now I find out that we’re actually in it for the full $165 million. I guess, you know, it should have been actually something that I could have figured out myself, actually, because the equity partner, the private partner didn’t have any equity. Therefore, how could a company without equity borrow $165 million to build a piece of infrastructure that really has a questionable return on investment? So questionable, in fact, the government would have to support the operations of the bridge by using all of the money that is now being spent on ferry operations and the operation and construction of the winter road that goes across the Mackenzie now at this point.

Now the bridge is at $181 million and on February 1st , I believe it was around February 1st , between

the 29th of January and February 1st , this

government returned to members in Priorities and Planning for a supplementary appropriation of $15 million. At that point my question was are we beyond the point of no return and should we stop the construction of the Deh Cho Bridge, pull the piers out or leave the piers in for maybe potential future construction; however, at that point, abandon the project. However, it appeared as though the costs at that time, which appeared to be fairly significant for getting nothing, were, I believe, well over $100 million already. So it seemed as though we were beyond the point of no return already in February when the last budget session started. We were advised that the project was now 50 percent complete at that time. The project now has four more piers, and we heard that it’s 50 percent complete now.

I’m not sure that the information that we went with on February 1st was exactly 100 percent accurate;

at least it wasn’t in my mind. I still, like my colleague Mr. Abernethy, feel that we have no options. I think our option to stop at this point would probably do further financial damage to the Government of the Northwest Territories than proceeding. However, I think it’s going to cost more than what is estimated at this point.

I’m no expert in bridge building, but I do see the trend going from what the initial cost was, I believe, in 2004, of about $52 million was the budget. It’s gone from that to a signing of $65 million to $165 million to $181 million. Now we’re finally out of the water and we are going to be essentially building the bridge over top of the piers at this point.

I said it before back on February 1st that I felt that

this bridge would cost a lot more than what is budgeted at this time. I still think it will. In the best-case scenario it doesn’t cost any more. However, we are taking on a major long-term debt. I do believe that the Government of the Northwest

Territories builds infrastructure, borrows the money to build infrastructure and then quickly, with surplus dollars in the immediate years preceding the completion of infrastructure, starts to pay it back so that at some point it is still potentially possible for the government to reduce its debt down to zero. It is still potentially possible. This makes it not possible unless we pay huge penalties. So we are kind of into this for a very long term.

I will question the government when I have an opportunity to. I am very interested in why the loan is structured the way the loan is structured. I am interested in why the government was not able to negotiate a term shorter than 35 years. I am not talking about the full amortization period here, Mr. Chairman, I am talking about the term of the loan. The fact that the amortization is 35 years and the term is 35 years meaning that at no point during the 35 years of the loan does the term actually expire and the government has the opportunity to renegotiate this loan under better circumstances. I am curious about why the government is not able to do that when we have an Aa1 credit rating. If that is something that is supposed be positive -- I am assuming that it is positive -- I will be concentrating on that because, like I said, the best-case scenario is we have major impacts for our government to provide infrastructure for the rest of the Northwest Territories. It has a major impact upon that.

As a representative of small communities like many of us around the table that don’t have infrastructure in place for our communities, we probably are not going to get it. That is because the money or the credit or the limits of our ability to provide more infrastructure to communities will be limited. We will be negatively impacted by the cost of this bridge even in the best-case scenario when this bridge comes in at $181 million. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. General comments. Next I have Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I feel like I have already said so much about the Deh Cho Bridge. It is probably the single topic that I have spoken to most in this Legislature in my 15 years that I have been an MLA. I don’t know what good it is to rehash everything that has already been brought up by other Members here today except I do feel obligated to my constituents to be on the record in this matter.

I think Mr. Abernethy did an excellent job of summarizing the situation where we find ourselves today.

Mr. Chairman, if we could argue that the bridge over the Mackenzie River is a useful piece of infrastructure that has merit, I guess the thing about the entire process that has been the most offensive to me as a Member of this Legislature, as an elected member, would be sheer inability to get

information in a timely manner that would have normally been involved, if this would have been available, if this process had been a normal capital planning and capital project process. I think that has been the most frustrating. We are trying to do our job as MLAs and to be accountable to the public. This is a piece of public infrastructure. I could go back at the many turns in the road, the many junctures where we tried to get information and the fact that it was the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation that was acting essentially as an agent for this project was the shield or the veil or the barrier that was put up to us that did not allow us that kind of scrutiny that we would normally apply in doing a good job of doing what we do, and that is to be accountable. That is one of the most frustrating things for me.

Would we have voted to spend $165 million of our capital on the Deh Cho Bridge had this not been done through this Deh Cho Bridge Corporation Act, and had this not come about the way that it did would we as a government have put ourselves in the position where we would have wanted to build something like this?

I think my colleague Mr. Beaulieu said that perhaps we wouldn’t have put this much of our capital budget into one project. Perhaps we would have spread it around to more communities, to more different types of projects, because $165 million or $185 million certainly represents a lot of capital infrastructure in a lot of places had we not done this.

But having said that, we are where we are today. We can’t change the past now.

It would be really sad going forward if this bridge turns out to have some structural problem with it. I think that would be the absolute insult on injury in this case, but we are assured by the Department of Transportation officials that every reasonable effort is being made to ensure the quality of the construction of this and that all industry standards are being adhered to.

As someone said, we are not bridge engineers. We are completely lay people when it comes to that kind of expertise. We are heavily relying on the commitment and on the word of the Minister of Transportation and his officials when they tell us that everything is above-board and everything is to the highest standards for quality. Because that would be quite unbearable to the people of the Northwest Territories to not only have a project that perhaps was not our priority and was not our way that we would have spent this money, but to have something that would be defective in some way going forward would be just an absolute shame.

I have absolutely no evidence that there is such a problem, but, as I said, we find ourselves where we are today. As I said in my Member’s statement today, one of the redeeming qualities of this project,

when we build a school or we build a hospital or build other types of infrastructure in the Northwest Territories, there is no way of generating revenue off of those. Those are straight outlay for capital and ongoing O and M. One of the redeeming qualities I suppose, if there are any of this project, is that if the traffic continues and if the tolls are collected, this debt can be paid off in a businesslike way for this piece of infrastructure. That is one thing that does make it unique. I hope the trucks keep rolling. I used to take the position that I didn’t support the bridge, but, well, as long as the people in Yellowknife will pay for it, I guess I could maybe just not lay awake at night and worry about it quite so much.

I always said it wasn’t going to impact the financial standing or situation of the rest of the people of the Northwest Territories, but if the plan going forward goes awry in any way, if there are problems with the bridge, if our projections for total revenues are wrong, I guess it will require everyone’s participation to now be involved in this project.

I suppose at some point in time there would have been a desire on the part of the people of the Northwest Territories to have a bridge over the Mackenzie River at Fort Providence. There are issues of inflation. There are issues of global warming that may have impacted the length of the season when we could have an ice road across the Mackenzie River. There are things that maybe hopefully we will look back on some day and say that it was good to get this piece of infrastructure in place when we did. I hope that’s the case, but I suppose only time will actually tell.

So like my colleagues who have already spoken, I don’t see any other choice but to support this today. I suppose I could say on principle and to be consistent with every position I’ve taken on this bridge, to be consistent I could, I suppose, vote against this. But I don’t think that would be the right thing for me to do. I hope that people out there in the public who might have been expecting me to do that, to really stand up against this, because there is a lot of opposition to this project and the way it’s been handled out there in the public, and maybe there would be an expectation that I would vote against it on a matter of principle and on a matter of sending a statement to this government. But the reality is that the bridge is half built. We’re the guarantors of the loan. The loan has been called. We have no choice but to step up to the plate on this project. But going forward, let’s do everything in our power as a department and as a government to ensure that we bring whatever we can to this to make it a quality project and a viable project from the cost-benefit analysis and the projections that we base this on going back many years.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Next on the list I have Mr. Bromley.

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?

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. I believe the agreement was we would allow everybody to make their general comments then we would ask for questions to the Minister, but we will have an opportunity to rebut your general comments after the Ministers have responded to the questions they are being asked now. You will have time to debate the response after we hear

back from the Ministers on your questions now. So to be fair to the other Members, I think we’ll just keep going through the other Members, because we still have five Members on the list.

Okay, Mr. Chairman. So I can’t get that clarification before, so I’ll speak in general terms here.

From what I’ve seen of the fiscal frameworks and projections, they were developed with densely rose-tinted glasses. They include projections that we’ve never achieved, to my knowledge. I’m wondering how many years we will be over our debt limit. I know that what was indicated in those frameworks is clearly not reality.

It speaks to the fundamental aspect that we need to know. I think we’re boxed in. We need to do this. But the most important thing to me is that we do it with a full appreciation of what the implications are so that we can best manage those implications. If we don’t do that, we’ll be again seeing things happen and reacting to specific events sort of randomly as opposed to in a planned way. Rose-tinted projections, we know that’s not the case. They look great, but the world just doesn’t work that way. If things went according to Hoyle it would be that way, but generally it’s Murphy that’s in control.

One of the aspects is this will be limiting our services and infrastructure in real terms. That’s why I think we need to get real projections to work with realistic projections and do what we can to minimize those impacts.

Finally, and I’ve mentioned this before in statements, how can we limit such irresponsible actions as those that have taken place and saddled this government with this situation in the future? To me that’s a question that is a serious question. We don’t want to repeat this in the future. So let’s put some thinking into that along with this.

I guess I’ll just finish by saying, along with everybody else, that this isn’t a great feeling, but we’re stuck with it. Constituents are contacting me, as well, saying don’t approve this. Unfortunately, that could be more costly than approving it.

Again, I hope the Minister heard my remarks about ensuring that what we have on the ground is totally sound and reliable and that will be confirmed and reported back to us before we go forward. I’ll leave it at that.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Next on my list is Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As stated by Mr. Bromley, at the risk of repeating things I feel that I must make my comments known in terms of this particular supp and how I feel about the bridge.

I stated last month in a statement that I was very disappointed that the supp we had to approve last

month was simply confirmation of my doubts about the viability of the whole bridge project. I’ve had concerns since I was first elected to this Assembly. Those concerns, unfortunately, were validated. That was very disappointing, very depressing, I think I stated at the time.

Like Mr. Abernethy, I am extremely frustrated. This project was one which I, like the residents of the NWT, inherited without any input. We came in after the fact. As Members we came in after the fact, some of us. Residents have never really had any input on this particular project at all and what we’ve come to now is an absolute worst-case scenario. The government backstopped this particular project, guaranteed that the project would go forward, that we would guarantee the funding for this project, and that the worst-case scenario, in my mind, is we now have to do that. We have to pick up the loan, we have to pick up the debt, we have to finish the project.

I’m particularly frustrated, I’m depressed, I’m disappointed because I feel backed into a corner, because I agree with Mr. Abernethy who, I think it was, said -- or Mr. Beaulieu, I don’t know which -- we have no option. We could vote the bridge down, but other people have spoken to that. It really isn’t a realistic option.

I, like others, feel that this project has been poorly managed from the outset. Whether that’s the fault of the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation or the fault of this particular government and our employees within the government I’m not very sure. I do know that we, according to the concession agreement, I think there was an opportunity for a project management board to be established. One was established. It was a two-member board. I would have thought that the project management board would have been the vehicle through which the project would have been overseen and that there would have been these two individuals keeping a fairly tight lid on what was going on and monitoring what was going on and making sure that the project was being managed properly. Apparently they really only looked at financial matters and didn’t really have much of an oversight in project management, if my understanding is correct. From what I understand as well, that board was disbanded last summer. So there hasn’t been any real work for that board since some time last summer. I have concerns relative to the management of the project and sort of how we got where we are.

I also have a number of other concerns. One of them particularly is some of the figures that we are being advised in terms of the repayment of the loan and of the debt. We’re working with figures which are at this point almost two years old. I have stated in committee, and I will state here for the record as well, that we need to have estimates, updated

estimates of the expenses that are going to be incurred for this project or this bridge once it’s done and estimated numbers for the revenues that we expect to garner from the bridge once it’s done. There are about four or five different items and I realize that it’s difficult to be totally accurate, but I’m asking for an estimate. I’m not asking for a totally accurate number. For me to make a decision on any matter -- and I’m being asked to make a decision on whether or not this supplementary appropriation should be voted in or out -- I need to have that kind of information. I can’t really accurately consider whether or not we should take on this debt if I don’t know whether or not our expenses and revenues are going to match when it comes time in November 2011 when this thing is presumably finished.

I think it is important relative to finances, as well, that we keep the Deh Cho Bridge expenses and revenues in a separate fund, that we treat them separately. They will be within the Department of Transportation, but I think we ought to set up a fund and deal with them separately so that we have an idea of what the total costs for this project are when it comes time and I think it will, as the years go by, provide a better idea of whether or not our expenses and our revenues are accurate and whether or not we’re spending too much or whether we’re making lots of money.

I have a concern for our future years’ budgets. I think that with the inclusion of this additional debt that we are going to probably have to revise our spending downwards somewhat. Again, we don’t have really good information on how our budgets are going to have to be revised downwards, but nobody has yet been able to tell me what the impact is in terms of, say, the budget for 2012-13 or 2013-14. How is this additional debt going to impact the amount of expenditures that we’re going to be able to have in those years?

I have a concern for the Deh Cho Bridge shareholders. They’re being pretty much chucked out, the baby with the bath water kind of thing. What are they going to be left with?

The other concern is what is going to happen to the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation? I know that things are being worked on, but when are we going to know what our relationship to the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation is? It’s, again, an unanswered question that I would love to know the answer for.

I do, like others, have a concern for public safety. If the suggestions and the rumours are true that we have some poor construction on a part of the bridge that’s already done, then I really am concerned that we may end up with a similar situation to what’s happened in Quebec a couple of times where an overpass has fallen in and I really don’t want us to go there. So we need to be absolutely certain that the construction is as it should be. And I trust the

information from the Ministers, but if we have any kind of a rumour, we’ve got to negate that rumour, we have to verify that, yes, the construction to date is absolutely solid.

I have a concern for the lack of a guarantee that we have for the accommodation that we’re going to get from the federal government, and I don’t want to call the federal Minister a liar, but we don’t have anything on paper and if it’s not a guarantee, then somebody could change their mind tomorrow and we don’t have anything that’s going to prove to us that, yes, this is actually going to happen and we are going to get the guarantee for our debt limit.

One of the things, too, I think is important is that there needs to be an acceptance of responsibility for this mess. Any of the people who were around when things were set in motion should accept some kind of responsibility for the situation that we’re currently in.

I’d like to mention a couple of things which I’ve mentioned before. They have been mentioned again, but they are important to me as well. One is that we have to do a complete analysis and audit of this whole project and an operational audit, not simply a financial. We have to know how things were set in place, what decisions were made, when and by whom, what actions were taken and the costs have to be tallied up. I have mentioned before that has to include our in-house or our in-kind costs that have been incurred by the GNWT staff, particularly the Department of Transportation. I feel very strongly that the Assembly has to set protocols in place that will ensure that in the waning months of an Assembly an action such as the one that was taken at the end of the 15th Assembly can’t happen

again and those things need to be set in place prior to the end of this Assembly and I certainly hope we can do that.

Lastly, I’d like to extend thanks to the GNWT staff, particularly at Transportation and to Ministers who have done a huge amount of work over the last several months to try and get this project salvaged. Even as frustrated as I am, I appreciate the work that they’ve done and I know that they’ve worked very hard to try and keep this thing on the rails and I do have to extend my thanks for that.

I certainly will have questions when we come to discuss the bill itself, but that’s all that I have at this time. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The next on my list is Mr. Jacobson.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Today hearing a lot of my colleagues in regard to this project, you know, it being the Bridge Act in the 14th Assembly coming into the time of being signed off in the 15th Assembly and now us having to deal with

this issue, I want to really make it clear for the smaller communities, like my colleague Mr.

Beaulieu was mentioning, that we have to let the communities know that this project is not going to affect us in the long term and all the projects that we do have on the books will stay as is on a go forward basis. I really think that anybody that’s going to be impacted the most out of this project will be the communities, so our hands are tied already. So you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t.

For myself, I will be supporting this motion on a go forward basis, but the government has to come out with a new rollout plan to tell us and tell the people of the Northwest Territories, and not only that, but with a game plan from their department in a big public blurp or a splash in the news in regard to this is our go forward, and hold them accountable to that. One hundred eighty-one million dollars is going to affect us. Speaking to the Premier, he said I really want to make this clear that it’s not going to be affecting the go forward for other projects in the communities. You know, I have projects I worry about for Ulukhaktok and Tuk and Sachs, Paulatuk, but I think on a go forward basis I was reassured that it’s not going to affect us, it would be totally separate and I really want to let the communities know and not scare them.

Like you said yourself, Mr. Chair, we have the simplest wording possible on the rollout plan for the people. It’s been almost two and a half years sitting here and this bridge has been and for some other of my colleagues it’s been a big issue and rightfully so. It’s a really important aspect of this government and our megaproject is this bridge. It will bring the cost of living down in Yellowknife and bring cheaper fuel, I guess, but at the end of the day all the taxpayers of the Northwest Territories are going to have to pay for this bridge.

So the only thing, like I said, the new rollout plan they have to come up with, letting the people know in the communities not to worry about the projects that are on the books. I look forward to listening to more of my colleagues on the go forward with this bill.