Proceed.

Welcome. I would like to ask the Minister to introduce his witnesses.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have with me Margaret Melhorn, deputy minister of Finance; Russ Neudorf, deputy

minister of Transportation; and, Sandy Kalgutkar, deputy secretary to the Financial Management Board. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister. We’re open for general comments. Mr Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a question of clarification. I was wondering why the $16.205 million is for operations expenditures.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It’s a contribution, which is why it’s listed that way.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Mr. Beaulieu, further general comments? No? Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would assume that’s a contribution to the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation and that who knows what’s going to happen. I guess every day that goes by is a surprise waiting to happen. This $15 million, obviously there’s good reason for us to be looking at supporting this $15 million. I believe firmly that if the Minister wants my support for this $15 million, I think the government’s got to come clean on the current disposition financially of that project. What claims are put against the project and by whom? How much money has been spent to date? What are the outstanding legal issues? What are the costs? I haven’t seen anything to that effect that would indicate that we have one iota of a clue about where we’re at with this project. That’s a sad state of affairs for a government for all intents and purposes to be building a $182 million bridge across the Mackenzie River to not know exactly where we’re at a on a day-to-day basis. I’d like to see the government pull that detail together.

Also, the issue with public confidence in the government’s handling of this project, and I’ve asked the Minister of Transportation on two different occasions last week about who exactly the project management team is. I want every assurance, and let me be clear about this, I want every assurance that this money and this project is going to be managed effectively and well. To date it hasn’t been. I believe that before I approve the $15 million that the government’s asking for for this project, I want to know who exactly is in charge of the project, what exactly their credentials are and their experience, have they worked on projects of this magnitude before, this size, this nature, a bridge project. We need to know those things and the public needs to have confidence that the government is handling this mess the best way that it can. Those are some things that I think are fundamental for me supporting the $15 million. Obviously those are some pretty fundamental questions and those are questions the public has.

Members of this House have a right to know, a right to get that level of detailed information, considering the gravity of the situation.

The gravity of the situation is that this project has the ability to cripple the government’s financial wherewithal in the near term. Absolutely. Make no mistake about it. It does. We had better be managing the project in a way that minimizes our liability and exposure and financial risk. Are we doing that? I can’t say with any certainty that we are, because I personally don’t know.

I hear information from the various Ministers when they need to come and tell us something. That’s the extent of what I hear. I mean, I’m hearing more about this project on the street, from e-mails I’m getting from other companies that want to bid on the work, from former government employees. You name it; people are chiming in on this project and its status. People aren’t very happy about the current disposition of this project.

I think again, I believe the Finance Minister and the Minister of Transportation and the Government of the Northwest Territories should lay everything on the table for everybody to see where exactly we are on this project. I have heard through good sources that the $15 million is just the start of other money that the Government of the Northwest Territories is going to have to come up with to put towards this project. I hope that is just a bad rumour, but, again, reputable sources close to the project. Is this just the beginning? It’s a scary proposition if we start dumping more and more millions of dollars into this project without first taking stock of where exactly we’re at.

Like I said, I’m of the belief that we should have gone to tender on the second portion of this project. Why we didn’t go to tender, I guess I’ll never fully understand the logic that the government’s using on that. I think the lenders themselves would obviously look at the Government of the Northwest Territories going to tender as good faith on our part in trying to get the best price we can for the remainder of that work on that project. Did we do that? No. Did we learn any lessons off the fiasco with ATCON and the sole-source contract to ATCON? Obviously not. We didn’t learn too much if we’re just negotiating with one company.

I can’t underestimate my disbelief that the government has resigned themselves to the fact that the best way to proceed is just to work with one company and we’ll get the best price we can from one company. That doesn’t make any sense. Not one iota of sense. Not to industry experts I’ve talked to in western Canada that bid on projects of this nature. They say it’s ridiculous. It’s unprecedented. I’m left to believe them. I’m left to believe them that this is what we’re left with.

Again, I think there’s going to be a lot of questions that Members have before we approve this $15

million and I think the government has to be able to answer these questions before we approve the $15 million.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Next on my list I have Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. With respect to the appropriations that are before us, there is the $15 million for advance contribution to the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation. I had remained largely in support of the Deh Cho Bridge Project and largely quiet on the issue. However, the feedback I’m getting from my constituency is that their initial gut reaction is they are fed up that they want the taxpaying public to bail out this project. My members were sceptical of the $165 million price tag. Like my colleagues in the House, they knew that over-expenditures were coming. As well, they’re not convinced that a $15 million request in this supplemental is the end price tag for this project which is now at $180 million to $200 million.

They do want to know a cradle to grave; I wouldn’t say grave, but a timeline and expenditure line of the project to date. It’s an opportunity for me to do it here with the Minister that’s before us to see if we can get that commitment. The constituency is not interested in a lengthy forensic audit which can be costly and/or one of our tools as legislators is to seek full public inquiry. That’s not a route that they want to go to either.

However, now that we are in control, we should have the capability to provide an examination of how we got here to date. The feeling, of course, is that any over-expenditures will be draining resources away from other regions, like my constituency of Nahendeh.

I believe that this Minister’s office that’s before us or the Minister of Transportation do have the capacity and capability of providing at least an explanation of how we got here to date. Yes, in our briefings we’re told certainly there are circumstances beyond our control, but I think we do owe it to our public to provide that the best way we can. I’ll certainly speak more on this topic as we deliberate this request that’s before us. With that, thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Next on my list I have Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, too, do not have 100 percent confidence that this could be the last of the money. I hope it is. I have never supported the bridge, but it’s proceeding, and I have never said so publicly either. I know that there is no impact upon, or very little impact, unless this goes into deeper cost than what we’re looking at here, to the people of Fort Resolution. It does impact the people of Lutselk’e by way of freight costs if the cost of freight, the totals coming across

hauling freight and groceries which are ultimately flown into Lutselk’e. I feel that we’re in this now as a government for the long haul. I don’t think that it would be viable to stop the construction of the bridge.

What I would like to see, I think that you’re physically looking at the project. It’s kind of scary to think that we have put up four piers and we’re here asking for money to support a budget that was already in excess of the original budget plan. I’m not sure, I mean, I’m sure it’s some sort of cash flow issue.

Therefore, I would like to, of course, see some sort of financial progress report and run that with a project status report. Originally my assumption is that there was some sort of project schedule that runs percentage of completion alongside the cash outlay. What I’d like to see is that exact thing. A financial progress report running alongside a project status report will give us an indication of exactly where we went off the rails, I suppose. Then also it could give us the comfort that if we’re headed along and we’re progressing and both the financial expenditures are not outrunning the actual construction. By comparing the financial expenditures with the percentage of completion, it will at least give me some comfort that there’s hope that we will get there.

Just from physically looking at it while crossing the river at Fort Providence, you don’t really get a feeling that they’re halfway completed. Yet we’re asking for a little bit of money here that’s 9 percent of what the budget is. To me, I’m having difficulty matching the two to try to understand that the project is actually only off schedule by 9 percent, we’ll say. That maybe the project is off schedule by more than that. If the project is off schedule by more than that, I think it’s going to give the House here a heads up as to exactly where the project is headed and if the project status report comes off, you know, it’s not running parallel to financial expenditures, it would be easy for us to identify, it would be easy for the government to look at that report and do a quick check as to what would be needed to get the status back, get the project back on, I guess, I’m not quite sure what the term would be, but I guess getting it back on the tracks to where the expenditures are not outrunning the percentage of completion. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. General comments. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Obviously, this is not happy news for any of us to have to ante up with $15 million that is GNWT money that could be spent on something else. I was never a supporter of the bridge. I just didn’t think we needed it. Other people thought it was a really high priority and thought it was really important to push it forward regardless of the cost

going up, regardless of the cost benefit analysis not being very favourable. There were people who thought that it was important to push this ahead.

Back in the 14th Assembly, when we passed the

Deh Cho Bridge legislation, I mean, everything seemed all kind of motherhood and sweet and, you know, I mean, who could say that we wouldn’t want bridge infrastructure, who could say that we wouldn’t want to have a bridge over the Mackenzie River at Fort Providence? I mean, that’s the problem, sometimes these things seem like a really good idea at the start, but when it gets closer to the time when we actually have to get involved in the working out of everything, it sometimes can take a turn.

The other thing that was really hard to say no to was the fact that it was self-financing. So it seemed kind of innocuous in terms of our government’s exposure at the time. We were told that the tolls would pay for the bridge. It made a lot of sense, actually, but I still didn’t think that it was… I didn’t have any great fears in the beginning about the kind of stuff we’re facing right now, but as time went on the thing got really changed a lot.

So here we are today. We’re looking at voting GNWT money into this. I would like the people who are owed money and who have done work in good faith on the bridge, I would like them to get paid. In that sense, I think that this goes some ways toward our government doing the honourable thing in terms of respecting those people who have done work and who would be financially very negatively impacted by not getting paid for the work that they’ve done.

I don’t know about the going to tender part. It seems that that would be a good thing if it could save something like $15 million and we weren’t having to come to the table with this. However, I’m not sure what all is involved in that and what kind of documents would have to be in order in order to do that.

Mr. Chairman, well, we could spend a whole lot of time here talking about what we could have, should have, would have, but I’m not really sure that that’s a worthwhile exercise at this juncture either.

The public/private partnership of this aspect has made it a very different type of capital project and creature than what we are used to dealing with as public governments managing capital infrastructure budgets and capital projects. This has made it a very, very different process. It’s not one we’re familiar with and it has caused some concern. I’m still hopeful that someday I hope that my grandchildren will be driving over that bridge going I’m really glad they built this back in 2010 when the cost was only $200 million instead of today when it would have been $400 million. I don’t know. I mean, everybody says why didn’t we build it 30 years ago when we were talking about it and it only would

have been $15 million. So I don’t know what inflation is going to do. I don’t know what’s going to happen. Hopefully somebody will look back on us and say this was a good idea, because it doesn’t feel like it right now.

I think it is an opportune time if the government is going to become more involved to examine this, even if it’s in the sense of, kind of a post-mortem of where we’ve been so far, I think it would be really good to examine this and see how we would have done things differently if we could have. But I think we do need to get on with finishing this project. My time is up already?

That’s okay, Mr. Chairman. That’s all I had to say for now. Thank you.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. I think the chair probably should take responsibility for that. I’m willing to grant you a couple more minutes if you want them.

That’s all I have to say. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Oh, look, I have 10 minutes.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I wanted to provide a couple of comments on this supp. In general, I’ve mentioned this before, I am always amazed at the amount of money that Finance comes back for after we pass an initial budget and asks for more money, and the amount of money that is asked for kind of blows me away. In looking at the items that are in this particular supp, there certainly are some which I can agree with. I think the $1.8 million, no, sorry, it’s one point whatever, but the money that’s required for the Mackenzie Valley Highway project description report, that’s $1.2 million, I think. To me, that’s an expense which we could not foresee, and I see that as an understandable supplementary appropriation expense.

Certainly the $15 million for the bridge, that was unforeseen. I provided my comments last week in a statement and I am, unfortunately, not surprised that we are over budget. I do think, though, that we have to approve this amount of money. It’s kind of one of those things where you have to hold your nose and jump in.

There are a couple of transfers of money back and forth between departments and from one year to the next, and I don’t have a problem with those. The funding that’s going to the City of Yellowknife to finish the bypass road; fairly obviously, I support that. It’s not a total cost to this government and it will allow the road to get completed. So I think our cost in that is probably, I think it’s $300,000 or $600,000, so it’s well worth the expense, I think, and that with the city covering the remainder.

The lab information system that the Department of Health and Social Services is looking for, I’m not absolutely sure that this is an expense that couldn’t have waited until the next year. I realize that this is an old system and it needs to be replaced, but it kind of goes to my difficulty with the lack of planning that seems to happen sometimes in terms of budgets in general and, you know, something comes along and it’s... All of a sudden, well, we need the money so let’s ask for a supplementary appropriation and get the money now instead of either planning better, earlier, or waiting and asking for the money when the regular budget comes through.

There is some transfer of money between departments for Tuk Airport. I absolutely support that. Then there are some transfers back and forth for infrastructure, federal infrastructure, stimulus funding money, and I don’t have a problem with those.

So, in general, I can accept most of what’s in here, but I do have problems with particularly the lab info system, which I’m not sure is of an emergent nature. That’s probably the only one that I have a really large problem with. So other than that, Mr. Chair, I have no further comments at this time. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Next on my list is Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, this particular bridge has to be built. The reasons not to build it just don’t make sense anymore, especially when you have pillars in the Mackenzie River, you have projects, you have about eight pillars there to finish it off.

Mr. Chair, the issue that I have is with the management of the project. With the additional $15 million to this project you really question the control and the management team and the previous arrangements in regard to how this happened in that this is so high and we really were asleep at the wheel on this one in terms of the money that’s coming forward. Now, I’m going to ask that in the future we have some good people on it that will take care of the project.

Mr. Chairman, the issue I have that rubs against my support somewhat is the issue of our request in terms of seeking a bridge in the Sahtu, the Bear River Bridge. There was cost escalation and there were all kinds of things that we just couldn’t put a bridge on the Bear River. When we have a bridge here that’s in a huge cost overrun, I don’t know quite all the insights to it, but we’re having a request coming like that to support, but they couldn’t get support in the Sahtu for the Bear River Bridge. It doesn’t sound very good when you’re out in the Sahtu region for our bridge.

However, I know that this bridge needs to be built, should be built and maybe there should be a different name for the bridge here: the Could Have, Should Have, Would Have Bridge, you know? Deh Cho in our language means big spirit or in English it means big river; but the true meaning of Deh Cho means big spirit, if you know our language.

As I said before, Mr. Chair, I have talked to several elders and one or two here in the House, in Fort Providence and the elders stopped in the hallway and said you have to support us because we want to build a bridge. When an elder talks to you, you have to listen to what they’re saying. So that’s why I’m following his words in my support for this. Otherwise, it would be a different story I would be talking about.

Mr. Chair, the bridge here is a significant infrastructure piece in the Northwest Territories, but probably on a larger scale the federal government is going to say, well, it’s probably a $200 million bridge and yet you guys want to build a $1.8 billion road and you can’t even get a bridge right and in place. So it has a lot of things in terms of significant play at a larger level.

We have to give support to the Minister to do this and get it done. Like Mrs. Groenewegen, the MLA for Hay River, said, hopefully when we are resting and retiring, that our grandchildren can go across the bridge and say thank God this bridge was built. Only history will tell.

There’s more to write about this bridge and this is only probably the second volume. There are a lot of hard lessons to be learned and I hope the government employees are taking these lessons how not to how to. It’s very important, Mr. Chair. The Members brought up some really good points here. Don’t take them lightly. They brought up some very good points here of how to do business in terms of this bridge. So in saying that, hopefully we can also get some attention in terms of the Bear River Bridge one day.

I wanted to also say that this piece of infrastructure is going to be finalized. It’s the YK bypass road here in the Kam Lake area from the airport. That’s really important infrastructure because of the safety issues, very important for the people in this region, in this city. I’m glad that is going to be done.

Mr. Chair, a few more comments I have is the importance of the federal infrastructure stimulus funding and hopefully some of our communities that require attention on dust control, paving, that we have the flexibility of this government to bring paving to our communities, allocating other paving areas. I do support communities that do get this, because their people also are going to benefit. So just as much as I want to see people in the Sahtu have some paving programs in their communities so we don’t have to deal with dust every summer. In six seasons now since I’ve been here we’ve had

to deal with dust and every summer it comes up. So I hope that we have some creativity and some planning, some fortitude to say yes, people in our small communities can have a paving program.

You have lots of good people working for you, they surely must know how to work the system so we get pavement for our communities. So I ask that of the government. One of my elders who is no longer here, Chief Paul Wright, said that when you start supporting communities, hopefully you’ll get that type of support back on some big initiatives before us here in terms of the approval of this supp and going forward.

I wanted to say overall that the Deh Cho Bridge does -- and I’ll cross my fingers -- bring the benefits to people in my region, people up here. I’m not too sure; I’ll have to see for myself, I guess. But certainly, I want to say for the record, Mr. Chair, I certainly support the initiatives of people in Fort Providence, the band, the Metis, I think they had good intentions when they committed to build this. There were some questions as to the impacts of the bridge on the Mackenzie River in terms of the fish, the wildlife and there are some people that live traditionally along that community. I’m not sure what kind of impacts you’re going to have further down the river in Tulita and in the communities I represent along the Mackenzie River. Only time will tell, but I think there’s some things that I’m not aware of yet that may come to light in the next couple of weeks or days because of confidentiality issues and sensitivity to the bridge. We’re not privy to... It’s not before us right now in this House.

So I hope that once this bridge is completed, that there will be a good book written about this project and I don’t know who is going to be the author, but I say to our leaders here and on Cabinet, please pay close attention to the details of this project. Put good people on the project, let them know about funding and management and work with the people in Fort Providence.

So, Mr. Chair, that’s all I have to say in terms of this supp. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Does committee agree that there are no further comments, general comments?

Thank you. I’d like to call on the Minister to respond to the general comments.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’d like to thank the Members for their comments and feedback. I would also like to offer to committee a package of information that we have pulled together to address some of the concerns for more detailed information. It contains the Dehcho Bridge Project and Construction Management Structure, the Dehcho Bridge Project

Estimates Summary, the Dehcho Bridge Project Costs to December 31, 2009, Dehcho Bridge Project Timeline and the Ruskin Team corporate capacity. Mr. Chairman, with your indulgence as well, I would ask that Minister Michael McLeod, Minister of Transportation, be allowed to respond to the general comments. Thank you.