Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I am in support of this motion. We’ve talked a lot about this particular project, certainly in the last day and a half. The impacts of the recent events regarding this particular project are many, and they are far-reaching, and I think they are well known to all of us.

I’d like to thank my colleagues for bringing this motion forward. I have spoken earlier about the need for an audit of the Deh Cho Bridge Project, and I think this goes a bit beyond that. We’re formally asking the Auditor General to do that for us. I think everyone in the House knows that there are many, many questions that surround this project. Many of us, on this side of the House at least, feel that this project has been circumspect from the start, from the very signing of the concession agreement and onwards until where we are today.

Anytime something breaks down it’s my belief that the reasons for that breakdown should be investigated and should be analyzed, and that, to me, is what this motion will do. It’s going to look at the project from the very beginning of the establishment of the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation Act and following it forward until where we are now.

I feel that we need to know why we had such problems with the Deh Cho Bridge Project. I think each of us in the House has our own beliefs as to the why, but we don’t have the expertise to go there, and we’re asking somebody else to do that for us. We need to know if the public/private partnership that we entered into was a good one. Was the P3 relationship the fault of our problems? Maybe, maybe not. If not, what was? Was the right project oversight in place? Were the financial controls adequate? Did the project, as established, follow GNWT legislation, regulations, policies and so on?

All of this and more can be looked into for us by the Auditor General of Canada and in a truly non-subjective or objective way. In my mind, there’s no more thorough or respected organization or person or department, for lack of a better word, who does this kind of evaluative work, and I believe that we need to get this work done. The recommendations from the Auditor General’s office, to me, will help us to fix what is broken with our system, and I do believe that we have something that is broken or else we wouldn’t be in the situation we are now.

I think it’s in the best interests of all Members of this House to support this particular motion. We need to learn from our mistakes. You’re probably going to hear that from every one of the Members as we speak, but we need to learn from the mistakes that we’ve made on this project and make the necessary changes to our policies and procedures to ensure that we don’t end up in our current situation sometime in the future.

So as I said at the outset, I certainly support this motion. I urge all Members on both sides of the House to support the motion. I think Cabinet Members should vote on this. There really is nothing in the motion which requires the government to do anything. We’re asking the Speaker to contact the Auditor General, and I would encourage all Members to vote. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.