Thank you, Mr. Chair. I was thinking about this last night and I was thinking about whoever thought that a bridge connecting the southern part of the Northwest Territories would be such a troublesome headache and heartache for some people, and for other people, what were they thinking, you know? Those types of thoughts ran through my mind.
Mr. Chair, when the bridge was considered in 1958 it was targeted at $6.2 million, as commissioned by the federal government consultant to do and at that time it was too expensive, unheard of, can’t do it. So they waited until a little later, until 1975, and, God forbid, 25 to 30 million dollars to build a bridge. Then after a while, later on it was considered again and it was unheard of naming the price at $50 million. Mr. Chair, now the price tag is at $182 million and a lot of people are just rolling their eyes and saying what happened to the price, it escalated so high.
You know, Mr. Chair, I’ve looked at it and I thought, well, you know, to build a bridge, it’s simple. You know, put together a team of planners, put together some financial gurus, some engineers, a construction company, get the support of the communities, territorial support, and simply build a bridge. Follow the plans and cut the ribbon and move on and build other bridges. I thought, you know, because we have very capable, competent people within the Northwest Territories and how things are getting done here. Sounds simple, right, Mr. Chair?
However, as I get more and more into the details and find out about the negotiations and how things move and what things need to be considered, it’s like a chef being in the kitchen with a recipe: everybody’s doing their sort of thing, how much you need of this, how much you need of that and you can’t do this before this gets done and everything’s got to move in a synchronized way sort of thing, and sometimes it just doesn’t happen -- the power goes out and all hell breaks loose. Then the light goes back and we say, okay, where are we at now? Well, we’ve got to start all over again on this one here, because this recipe is just not right because it has to be at this temperature and all this stuff.
Really, it’s about getting people to work together, the way I see it. Somebody had to have the vision here, and I’m not too sure if we had a strong enough vision to really construct the bridge and put the bridge in in the way that we thought it was planned to be.
I think my colleague Ms. Bisaro talked about the management team, the quality of the management team, doing the checks. That’s what I’m looking forward to, this new appropriation bill and how is this government going to assure the people of the Northwest Territories, my constituents in the Sahtu, that quality control assurance is going to happen from now on, and is that going to be the norm and the ethical integrity standards of all our infrastructure projects.
Mr. Krutko from the Mackenzie Delta said it earlier, there are other projects that need to be considered, looked at, seriously put on the books in terms of opening up the Northwest Territories, not just one part of the Northwest Territories but other parts of the Northwest Territories. If we’re really serious about this Deh Cho Bridge, we should be really seriously considering other bridges like the Peel, the Great Bear, even I’ll mention the Liard. We have to consider that. We are investing $165, over $182 million into a major infrastructure. We are going to own this asset. Well, we should also look at other regions that need the type of infrastructure that will open up their economic resources to contribute to the Northwest Territories, not just on a part-time basis.
With this Deh Cho Bridge I hope that we come out with a real good book on how to build bridges in the Northwest Territories. We have some people who are advising us. Well, we have to really pull them to task here and hold them accountable as to the advice that we’re getting, because this project here, when you look at the big picture, Mr. Chair, is small. We want to build a Mackenzie Valley Highway at $1.8 billion; $165 million, $182 million is nothing. By golly, let’s get it right here, and let’s learn all the lessons we had with the Deh Cho Bridge. Take it as a real hard learned lesson.
Is this going to increase our cost of living or decrease our cost of living in Fort Providence, in Behchoko, in Whati, Gameti, and of course into the community of Yellowknife and Dettah and Ndilo? What about in the Sahtu and the Beaufort-Delta, the Mackenzie Delta, Nahendeh? Are those communities going to have to see an increase or a decrease in their cost of living? Because we are certainly a part of that bridge now, we’re right in bed with them. Are we going to see that? So those are the kind of questions I’m going to ask later on.
Again, my colleague talked about the federal government’s involvement and I spoke earlier to Premier, and I think Mr. Premier has given me some assurance and satisfaction, but the federal
government’s involvement to go ahead in terms of how we can get some evidence and say yes, the federal government is going to say what they’re going to do. That will go a long way with me in terms of putting some support behind this appropriation bill here.
The cost of opening up the Northwest Territories in the southern part certainly has opened up my eyes in terms of what it takes. It’s not a popular thing, building this bridge here. Certainly from the community of Fort Providence, they had a vision. I’m not too sure, as my colleagues mentioned, if the management had really owned up to the vision, otherwise we wouldn’t be in this position. This was a P3 project, a totally different scenario. Now we’re in a different ballgame here, so I hope we have some leadership on this here to move on with the project here.
I talked about the Mackenzie Valley Highway and the bridges. I certainly want to know for sure in terms of how this is going to affect us in the years to come.
Mr. Chair, the comments I do have... I want to save it for later on when we get more into the detail. There are some really good comments around the table that I heard in terms of this superstructure that’s going into the Mackenzie River. You know, I take the position that I do have a choice that I’m making today. My choice is that if I do not support it, you would tell me specifically what the consequences are going to be to pull those piers out. You will tell me what it’s going to cost the Sahtu, because I also have a choice to say if we do go ahead with it. What type of satisfactory answers can you give me to say yes on projects, on debt, long-term repayment and various options to repay this on a shorter term, and other things like that would satisfy me.
People in the Sahtu want to know that if the Deh Cho Bridge is going to be, we want to know if the Bear River Bridge can get built and have this kind of support on the bridge on the Bear River. My friend talked about the Peel River. They want to know, if we do it for one, we are going to do it for all. Or even Liard, they talked about a bridge there. We have to talk about this. We have to open the North for everybody, not just for southern parts. I will end it there, Mr. Chairman. Let’s get on this and move.