Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was certainly in the Cabinet on the day that started the whole process of the Deh Cho Bridge. I have no problem to say that I continue to support the bridge. It was a megaproject. It was good for the North and even after we were elected, up to a year ago or 18 months ago it was a timely project. The economy was going downhill and providing work and

opportunities to the North certainly was a good thing. However, I still continue to support the bridge. I ran out of friends in supporting the bridge, Mr. Chairman, only because of the debacle that has happened in the last year. My constituents, of course, are increasingly concerned. They have not said stop the project to me at any point, but they do want to say that as taxpayers they don’t want to be paying for it. If anything, the Minister and the Premier can explain to the public about some of the cost recoveries, efforts, that are built into the process as well as we approved $15 million not even two or three week ago. Of course, when that hits the media, the taxpayers are concerned that they are the ones that are going to be paying for it. Some more explanation for that is certainly necessary.

One of the reasons I support the bridge project is because myself and my constituents have always believed that some regions get their special projects and eventually somewhere down the line my region will get a special project. They are huge and big. They require a tremendous amount of resources, money, and we cannot do two or three at a time. Eventually I see a special project for my region. One of them, of course, is one of the entry points to us eventually getting involved in the Mackenzie Highway expansion. We foresee a bridge around Fort Simpson as well.

At the same time, within the last two and a half years the frustration of the Members come out here is only because we as MLAs, our power as MLAs is the most potent, I guess, when we assemble. That is the time we can question the government. We can unite as MLAs. We can lobby, persuade and pursue government for accountability issues. This is no different. My concern is how is government going to inform Members from this side of the House that Regular Members and Priorities and Planning committee throughout up until May and even throughout the summer months of progress of the Deh Cho Bridge, because it is no wonder my colleagues are distrustful. We spend a lot of time away from the House during the summer months only because we are doing our summer constituency work and I think it is up to almost two and a half months that we are away during the summer.

Once again, when we break from here, we are not going to resume until sometime in May. During those quiet periods of when our Legislature is not sitting, that we as Members are doing the hearsay things, get bits and pieces of information, but we did pass a motion in this House in the winter session as well as there was a commitment by the Minister to update the MLAs on a regular basis. I would like to challenge him. How is he going to best do that? I don’t know if it is by phone conferences or else pick an opportune time between now and the main session to get us all together and to

update us on the progress of the construction. That is what my constituents want from me. They want me to have the opportunity to be more watchful over the project.

I was never one for micromanaging government projects there, Mr. Chairman, but in this case there are lots of sensitivities around the Deh Cho Bridge project. I myself as an MLA want assurances and I want the confidence to report to my constituency that, yes, with government taking over the bridge, there is a good stable management team. One of the ways that we build trust, Mr. Chairman, is we have to have frequent meetings to ensure that things are on track, to ensure that a lot of the questions that myself and my colleagues have been asking are answered. I do not want to see that if we conclude here by Friday and we are not resuming again until May, like I said, but I think that there has to be a mechanism of bringing us back together as a full Assembly through some form or another to continue to update us on the progress of the bridge.

As well, during my questions in the House in the winter session to the Minister of Transportation around the Deh Cho Bridge, the confidence of the public needs to be reassured too. I think the Minister spoke of establishing a website, trying to put as much construction information on the website. We as MLAs get a lot of information, but the public deserves that very same information and I am reiterating what my colleague said about what we said all along: the public wants to know. They have a right to know as much information that they can get that is not confidential in nature. As we are progressing here, we have done lots of work. We released lots of information but it would be nice to consolidate it into a website. I am not too sure how they would do it, but I think that commitment should be followed up as well.

Another thing that we are taking over the bridge project. It is too bad about the way things played out there, Mr. Chairman. Having the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation and the community of Fort Providence building the bridge was a good intention. Unfortunately, there are many reasons for it. One of the biggest ones, of course, as they call it a P3 project. Hopefully we can learn from this because other communities will want P3 projects. They will want opportunities to build big infrastructures because there are some on the books. At the same time we have to learn from it and establish at least some type of guidelines that especially in this case we should have had assurances like we had to establish and managing a manager and engineers. There should be some criteria to follow and not just set up a corporation for setting up a corporation. I think by not being too diligent in that sense, we were certainly part of that failure. So hopefully we will learn from that and for the future, because we do need communities to work with our government and work towards the

benefit of the communities, be it financial or social or economic, whatever their benefits may be. Just because we got a bad experience here doesn’t mean that we cannot move forward with other projects there.

With that, if anything in my opening statements is pertinent here is that we’re going to need a mechanism for reviewing progress reports between now and May and then throughout the summer months. I believe that’s up to the government to come up with a solution like that.