Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’ll deal with some of the comments that were made and requests for information and then I’ll hand it over to Minister Michael McLeod to deal with some of the technical aspects of the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation and the structures and Associated Engineering, all that side of it.

A number of things that we need to put out in, as Members have said, clear English, plain English for the record for the public of the Northwest Territories, the first one is that, I think Mr. Bromley stated, he’d rather not be here. I’ve heard other Members say that and I share their frustration. We would not want to be here as well. Our preference is that everything sailed along as was initially designed and we would be saying this is the best thing we ever entered into with our aboriginal partnership across the Northwest Territories or the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation, in this case, and had a very successful project. Unfortunately, like a self-fulfilling prophecy from some of the Members in the Assembly over the years, this has come to the worst-case scenario. I must say that there are times when it’s been very frustrating when we are in very sensitive areas of discussion with the lenders, and in this case we’ve got a commitment from the federal Minister of Finance, Minister Flaherty, dealing with us on this debt relief for the Deh Cho Bridge Project. Again, we’re making comments that hopefully do not affect us as we go forward and shut those doors on us.

I put a lot of weight in my dealings with Minister Flaherty. He has told me in the past when I was Finance Minister, and this had started even into this first budget of the 16th Assembly, he was clear to

me on what we were going to get or not get. So when he tells me that he will work with us to deal with this debt, I put a lot of weight to his words on that side of it. We’re trying to get the language narrowed down as best as possible and provide that comfort to the Members of the Legislative Assembly.

Secondly, the fact that if we do not deal with this matter as we have proposed to the Members of the Legislative Assembly, then guaranteed what Members are saying now about impacts on projects, impacts on our operations and maintenance, they will be impacted. We will have to live within our fiscal responsibility policy which tells us we have to live within our means. Although this year we would not impact it, we would be impacted on that debt limit before the end of the 16th Legislative Assembly without relief from the federal government. I’m putting a lot of weight in that relief from Minister Flaherty.

The other areas that we do need to again be clear on is that without the necessary steps being taken by this Assembly we would have to pay penalties over and above what is being proposed now. As

much as Members are reluctant to accept that, that is the fact. The concession agreement is there. The concession agreement has been in the hands of Members since the early life of this government. That’s unfortunate it’s there. The reason it was a 35-year agreement was the simple fact that as the Government of the Northwest Territories we knew we couldn’t afford to do a big project in big chunks. So it was spread out much like we would do a mortgage on a home, but a 35-year agreement. This agreement is typical of corporate agreements of this nature when it comes to borrowing of money.

There has been much said about this. In fact, I was doing a lot of historical review of Hansard right back to 2003 when the legislation for the Deh Cho Bridge Act was passed by the Legislative Assembly. There were some very nice things said about that legislation, about what it could mean for us and wishing the partners much success as we move forward. I think many of us shared that in the life of the 14th Legislative Assembly. Unfortunately, we

are in this situation now where we’re having to assume it and make it a wholly owned government project, and as I said in the Minister’s statement earlier, accept and assume the debt and the project on the books as a government capital project.

So there was much support for the act itself. In the act there was the design of a yet-to-be-agreed-to concession agreement. So in the 14th Assembly,

that was put forward; 15th Assembly, the

negotiations began and were worked on and signed off; 16th Assembly, we started dealing with the

financial matters of that concession agreement and getting those details in order and working with quite a number of partners.

The area that was discussed about the fiscal projections being rose-tinted glasses, I would say that’s been far from what I’ve come to look at in my years as a Member of the Legislative Assembly. There are many times that I’ve been told when I used to be in Finance and Finance overall was told too conservative, you’re too conservative, you need to open the doors more. So we tend to operate on that basis and it served us well.

When we sat down as the Legislature at the start of this Assembly, we presented a belt-tightening exercise to live within our means to avoid the debt wall. We have avoided the debt wall, even though we did not succeed to the fullest extent we wanted to, because Members felt it was too harsh. So we did not fully implement the belt-tightening exercise back then, but we still achieved a portion of it that allowed us to live within our means. Same scenario here: we’re proposing we take this project over and we have a fix in place that would allow us to move forward without impacting, and I’ll say this again, without impacting on the fiscal strategy that was presented in Finance Minister Miltenberger’s budget address made in this House at the end of

January. That strategy stays in place before we got the news from the lenders that they wanted us to assume the debt. So we’re still working with that strategy in place.

I must say, I, as well, am frustrated with the fact that we have come to this place in the history of the Government of the Northwest Territories, but at the same time we’ve heard Members about supporting projects across the North, other bridges, other highways, other infrastructure that is needed across the Territory, much the same as we talk about the Deh Cho Bridge. At one point there was the… Someone actually showed me, a past resident of Yellowknife showed me the dollar bills that were made for the bridge project back then and people bought these as a symbolic way of saying they wanted the bridge project. Every government until the 14th Assembly saw it as unable to be done

because of our financial processes and our debt limits, until this matter came up and this approach was taken and risk was weighed and a decision was made to move forward.

So we’re in this position. We have a supplementary appropriation documented to assume the debt and the project and the dollars. We’re working with the federal government to give us relief on the debt situation overall, the debt limit they’ve put in place, short-term relief, as Minister Flaherty has told me, and we will need to go on that basis.

Yes, there needs to be a better accounting. We fully realize that. In fact, when the first signs of the construction problem started to appear, that project management board, as Member Bisaro spoke of, was in place. Following that, with all of the difficulties that came in place, there was a new management structure put in place and the lender signed off on that. So for the year following, things moved along much better. In fact, the construction company now, Ruskin, that is doing this, showed that that next year... They were able to move that project along in a manner much smoother and move it along at a good rate, and we’re holding now, as we go forward, that that will be the practice going forward. But for the rest of the details on the technical side and all of that, I will go to Minister McLeod on that.