This is page numbers 4141 - 4178 of the Hansard for the 16th Assembly, 4th Session. The original version can be accessed on the Legislative Assembly's website or by contacting the Legislative Assembly Library. The word of the day was housing.

Point of Privilege
Point of Privilege

Michael Miltenberger

Michael Miltenberger Thebacha

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I want to refer as well to some principles, building principles, that were approved by Caucus, Caucus at Blatchford Lake and released to the public where we talk about effective communication as a double-edged sword. For consensus government to work, all Members must agree to respect the confidentiality of information before it is properly made public. Similarly, Members should acknowledge the fact that information was shared in confidence once it has been released.

Mr. Speaker, the point is, properly made public, we’re talking about a lot of other information other than the $15 million and the concern is that the Members know there are sensitive negotiations underway and this type of discussion does nothing to aid that process and, in fact, brings confidential information into the House before it can properly be made public. Thank you.

Point of Privilege
Point of Privilege

The Speaker

The Speaker Paul Delorey

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. To the point of privilege. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.

Point of Privilege
Point of Privilege

Robert Hawkins

Robert Hawkins Yellowknife Centre

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. May I remind this House it wasn’t that long ago we were having serious discussions about leaking of information, committee confidence and whatnot. I don’t think the information told today is necessarily a detriment to the project, but it still stands for the principles of frustration that were caused earlier. Information received is still being learned and understood. So perhaps laying it before the House was an ill choice at this time. Is it reasonable? I believe the public should be fully apprised of the information that will come forward, but I certainly hope that that will be in a timely way when there is a decision and a direction to weigh the pros and the cons of the project.

Mr. Speaker, I will just remind the frustration of this House... I will stress the witch hunt that was back here not that long ago about information leaking out of committee rooms and quick fingers were out there to point and how people were willing to frustrate the process. Yet, here we see slippage of it again. So, Mr. Speaker, I think today is another example of where consensus government isn’t working, yet it’s supposed to be the principles of how we share and work together. I don’t think stating a ballpark number or an actual number does anything to our process but destroy it. Thank you.

Point of Privilege
Point of Privilege

The Speaker

The Speaker Paul Delorey

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. To the point of privilege. The honourable Member for Range Lake, Ms. Lee.

Point of Privilege
Point of Privilege

Sandy Lee

Sandy Lee Range Lake

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Just for the benefit of the public out there, I think it’s important to know we have a very unique system of government. It’s a system where everybody in the House has access to information in a way that’s unthinkable in other southern parliamentary jurisdictions. This is a Legislature where all the Members have a preview of the entire budget, the entire capital project budgets, confidential briefings on negotiations and everything. I think that’s a good thing. I think that’s what we want to keep. But in order for that to work we have to follow some rules. The rules are confidential briefings and stay confidential until it’s made properly public. The public needs to know that all that information does come out into the public and I am sure we will continue to have a full debate on the Deh Cho Bridge Project, but it’s important to know we have rules in this House and those rules have to be followed. If those rules have been breached, then that is breach of parliamentary privilege. Thank you.

Point of Privilege
Point of Privilege

The Speaker

The Speaker Paul Delorey

Thank you, Ms. Lee. To the point of privilege. The honourable Member for Yellowknife South, Mr. Bob McLeod.

Point of Privilege
Point of Privilege

Bob McLeod

Bob McLeod Yellowknife South

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think this is a very critical point to the operations of consensus government. Many times we hear that everybody wants information, as much information as possible. In order to function properly, we have to feel confident when we share confidential information that it will stay confidential. I don’t think we want to allow ourselves to get into a situation where we can pick and choose what is confidential or not and that you can just use it for your own purposes. I think that if we start operating that way, then everybody will start picking and choosing whatever they want to say. On sensitive information that is confidential that can affect negotiations or discussions, we have to make a commitment to keep that principle and honour it. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Speaker’s Ruling
Speaker’s Ruling

The Speaker

The Speaker Paul Delorey

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. To the point of privilege. Hearing no further comments on

the point of privilege, colleagues, I have heard a lot of discussion on this particular topic in the House. However, not having heard the specific information that I could tell was not released before, I will take this point of privilege under advisement and refer to Hansard. However, I will allow the Member to continue with her reply to opening address with the caution of knowing the rules about disclosing confidential information. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Speaker’s Ruling
Speaker’s Ruling

Jane Groenewegen

Jane Groenewegen Hay River South

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will respect whatever that ruling is. I don’t suppose I can retract the number now. It’s already out there, but, Mr. Speaker, it has been very, very frustrating as a Member of this Assembly to try to get information about this project.

I just provided a quote from Hansard. When we got elected as the 16th Assembly, I came in here and I

asked specific question after specific question of the Premier about if any contracts, any agreements, any concession agreements, anything had been signed by this government and I was repeatedly told that nothing had been signed. Then I asked about the liability of this government and I was told we weren’t guaranteeing the big loan, as I just quoted from Hansard, Mr. Speaker.

So I just believe that the public has a right to know what we’re up against here. I mean, two weeks ago we heard that this project was on budget. Today the Minister, and I do thank him for being forthcoming with the press release, the press release says that in fact Cabinet’s going to be coming back to the Regular Members and asking our support for another $15 million for this bridge. I just want the public to know that we are in a very unenviable situation right now. It is not a nice feeling to be in a situation where we have a project that’s half built, that we asked questions about all along, that we had concerns about, that the information was not fulsome coming back to the Members on this side of the House. I do not think that is... I think that’s probably an understatement.

I will continue with my statement and hopefully nothing else in it will offend the Members in the House. I’m not going to be a part of... I want to be respectful of the committee process and the unique ability of the consensus government to share things, but I don’t want to be a part of covering up things from the public. Already some people in the public have said – We get criticized if we know things and don’t say them. They say, oh, you knew about that all along and you didn’t do anything? You didn’t say anything? And we get almost tarred with some kind of sense in the public that we were conspiring to cover something up. So I don’t know, I guess the line between respecting the committee process, but I did give the Minister notice yesterday I was going to talk about this.

Anyway, let me continue on with my text. Just in case, in the matter of the loan guarantee, anyone

thinks that the GNWT is in the driver’s seat on these fiscal forecast scenarios, in fact the lender is in the driver’s seat on this and has the ability to call the loan just because of almost, well, the reasons that we’ve talked about, the ones that are already on the table, the changes and the revisions to the design, the management, the cost. These are all substantive changes to this project. So we may think that we are, and we are trying to, and I’m coming to the fact of what the Minister is trying to do. In that instance we would still be on the hook for the entire loan thus soon putting us over the debt limit or thrusting us into the exercise of scrambling to see what we could sell, how we could cut our capital budget, or where else we could make cuts in order to get ourselves under that $500 million debt limit.

The other thing about these scenarios is that they do not account for anything unforeseen. We can make assumptions and we can say, well, if this happened or that happened, but we don’t have a comprehensive list of unforeseen things. So for our government to operate in a way that financially puts us that close to our borrowing limit of $500 million, well, I guess the public will have to decide if that is a good idea, because the impacts of this will be felt by everyone.

That is why, in the interest of public and transparent government, the people of the Northwest Territories have the right to fully be aware of how this could impact us all.

The Finance and Transportation Ministers along with their staff are trying to make the best of a very difficult situation that we find ourselves in. I believe they, like us, want to mitigate any negative impact as a result of this recent turn of events. But let’s not forget that at least three of them across the floor of the House were at the table when the agreement was signed that got us into the mess that we are in today.

To those who have raised concerns about this project at every juncture along the way and to those who were not around, and some on this side of the table, too. Okay, there’s some finger pointing going on here. To those poor folks who were not even around from the inception of this debacle, there has been a collective, sickening feeling as we have contemplated our options. I think that would characterize the last few days. So although we are grappling with potentially very bad news, I think that the people of the NWT have a right to know and hear and comment to us on the situation. We cannot sit here in silence while we know the behind-the-scenes truth of the potential magnitude of the challenge that could be before us.

The failure of our government to manage this scenario through to the best outcome possible would impact major projects in the future such as the Taltson hydro expansion, the Mackenzie Valley

Highway, and literally any other major project that the GNWT has the potential to be involved in. Transparency in public government is of the utmost importance. Trying to cover something like this from public scrutiny and input in spite of sensitive negotiations is not advisable. That’s why I’ve taken the opportunity today.

It would seem to me that under normal circumstances there would be some fallout for those who have propelled us into this mess. But in the interest of working together to stabilize the situation, that is probably a discussion better left to a future time.

On a personal note, I was speaking to my son Jeffery on the phone last night, who, as you know, has a very keen interest in politics. It was very stressful to get involved in this debate. I said that I could say nothing about it. Who could fault me and who could criticize me if I just sat on my hands today and said nothing? I think it’s very well known by people that I’m not planning to run again. I could say let the next government worry about it. I said, I don’t even know why I care so much. And he said, Mom, you care so much because this is not right. We’ve got ourselves into a situation that is not right for the people that we represent.

Sometimes leadership isn’t about doing what’s popular, but it is about doing what’s right. Your representatives, the MLAs of this Assembly, are about to be called upon to approve another $15 million for the Deh Cho Bridge and to try and manage our way through this difficult situation with our colleagues in the Cabinet. There is a right way to go and we would like to take that path.

Speaker’s Ruling
Speaker’s Ruling

The Speaker

The Speaker Paul Delorey

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Item 11, petitions. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.

Speaker’s Ruling
Speaker’s Ruling

Robert Hawkins

Robert Hawkins Yellowknife Centre

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I seek unanimous consent to return to item 8, written questions, on the order papers of today.

---Unanimous consent granted.

Speaker’s Ruling
Speaker’s Ruling

The Speaker

The Speaker Paul Delorey

Item 8, written questions. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.

Robert Hawkins

Robert Hawkins Yellowknife Centre

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister responsible for NWT Housing Corporation.

1. Could the Minister provide the official written

definition that the Housing Corporation uses to define and demonstrate barrier-free housing?

2. Would the Minister provide details as to the

location of each of the 300 barrier-free units in

the corporation’s public housing inventory by community and by size of each individual unit with regards to the number of bedrooms?

3. Would the Minister list what modifications,

specifically to each unit, which make it fall within the definition being used by the Housing Corporation where they have defined it as being a barrier-free unit?

The Speaker

The Speaker Paul Delorey

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Item 12, reports of standing and special committees. Item 13, reports of committees on the review of bills. Item 14, tabling of documents. Item 15, notices of motion. The honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Krutko.

David Krutko

David Krutko Mackenzie Delta

Mr. Speaker, I give notice that Monday, February 15, 2010, I will move the following motion: now therefore I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Nahendeh, that the government develop a program for community long-term care facilities for elders and that the funds for construction of such facilities be included in the 2011-2012 Capital Budget.

The Speaker

The Speaker Paul Delorey

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Item 16, notices of motion for first reading of bills. Item 17, motions. Item 18, first reading of bills. Item 19, second reading of bills. Item 20, consideration in Committee of the Whole of bills and other matters: Bill 2, Forgiveness of Debts Act, 2009-2010; Bill 4, An Act to Amend the Child and Family Services Act; Bill 7, An Act to Amend the Summary Conviction Procedures Act; Tabled Document 62-16(4), NWT Main Estimates, 2010-2011; and Minister’s Statement 47-16(4), Transfer of the Public Housing Rental Subsidy, and by the authority given to me as Speaker by Motion 12-16(4) I hereby authorize the House to sit beyond the daily hour of adjournment to consider the business before the House, with Mr. Krutko in the chair.

Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters

The Chair

The Chair David Krutko

I’ll call Committee of the Whole to order. Today we have under consideration Bills 2, 4, 7, Tabled Document 62-16(4) and Minister’s Statement 47-16(4). What is the wish of the committee? Mr. Beaulieu.

Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters

Tom Beaulieu

Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The committee would like to continue the review of Tabled Document 62-16(4), Main Estimates, and continue with the Housing Corporation and hopefully get MACA read in today.

Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters

The Chair

The Chair David Krutko

Is committee agreed?

Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters

Some Hon. Members

Agreed.

Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters

The Chair

The Chair David Krutko

Okay. With that, we’ll take a short break and then come back to deal with the Housing Corporation.

---SHORT RECESS

Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters

The Chair

The Chair David Krutko

I’d like to call the House back to order. At this time, I’d like to ask the Minister of the Housing Corporation if he’d like to bring in witnesses. Mr. McLeod.

Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters

Robert C. McLeod

Robert C. McLeod Inuvik Twin Lakes

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would.

Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters

The Chair

The Chair David Krutko

Robert C. McLeod.

Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters

Robert C. McLeod

Robert C. McLeod Inuvik Twin Lakes

Yes, Mr. Chair, I would like to bring in witnesses.