Thank you, Mr. Roland. The honourable Minister responsible for Human Resources, Mr. Bob McLeod.

Mr. Speaker, further to my Return to Written Question 1-16(5), I wish to table the following document entitled Direct Appointments, April 2008 - March 2009, and April 2009 - February 2010. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I’d like to table an article from a magazine called Bridge Design and Engineering. It’s a UK magazine and someone had brought it to my attention, so I’d like to table the article regarding the Deh Cho Bridge Project. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. I wish to table correspondence dated March 4, 2010, from the Premier of the Northwest Territories conveying the government’s request to reconvene the House for the period of March 23rd to the 26th, 2010.

Item 15, notices of motion. 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: Tabled Document 4-16(5), Executive Summary of the Report of the Joint Review Panel for the Mackenzie Gas Project, and Tabled Document 8-16(5), Supplementary Appropriation No. 2, 2010-2011 (Infrastructure Expenditures), with Mr. Krutko in the chair.

I’d like to call Committee of the Whole to order. In consideration in Committee of the Whole of bills and other matters: Tabled Document 4-16(5), Executive Summary of the Report of the Joint Review Panel for the Mackenzie Gas Project, and Tabled Document 8-16(5), Supplementary Appropriation No. 2, 2010-2011 (Infrastructure Expenditures). What is the wish of the committee? Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the committee today would like to deal with Tabled Document 8-16(5), Supplementary Appropriation No. 2, 2010-2011 (Infrastructure Expenditures).

Does committee agree?

With that, we’ll take a short break and begin with Tabled Document 8-16(5), Supplementary Appropriation No. 2, 2010-2011 (Infrastructure Expenditures).

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I would like to call Committee of the Whole back to order. Prior to the break we began with Tabled Document 8-16(5), Supplementary Appropriation No. 2, 2010-2011 (Infrastructure Expenditures). With that, I would like to ask the Premier if he has any opening comments. Mr. Premier.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am here today to present Supplementary Appropriation No. 2, 2010-2011 (Infrastructure Expenditures). This document

outlines a request for $165,439 million for capital investment expenditures in the 2010-11 fiscal year.

This supplementary appropriation seeks authority to record the work completed on the Deh Cho Bridge Project and to record and use the remaining cash available to complete the project.

This appropriation authority is required as the project will now be recorded directly as a GNWT asset in our financial statements. Up to now, the project has been recorded on the GNWT’s consolidated financial statements. However, by assuming direct responsibility for the project, as well as for the project debt, the GNWT will now be recording the project on our non-consolidated statements and project expenditures will now be made from the GNWT’s consolidated revenue account.

In other words, the project will now be a GNWT capital project and will be recorded as if it had been one from the start. The project cash will now form part of the consolidated revenue account and thus requires the Department of Transportation to seek authority to draw it down in order to pay for phase 2 of the project. This is similar in process to the way our government flows money from the federal government for infrastructure projects such as Building Canada projects and the recently approved funding for the project description reports on the Mackenzie Valley Highway, where the department required an appropriation to draw down federal funding.

As Members are aware, the lenders in the Deh Cho Bridge Project have notified the GNWT that they are exercising their rights to oblige our government to assume the project debt. Because assuming this debt could result in the GNWT exceeding our borrowing authority, we have sought federal authority for this debt. Federal Finance Minister Flaherty has committed to accommodate the GNWT’s ability to manage fiscal pressures within a borrowing limit, prompted by the short-term requirements associated with the Deh Cho Bridge Project. This will likely take the form of a temporary increase in the borrowing limit. Discussions with Finance Canada on the specifics are ongoing.

The Minister of Transportation will be joining me at the witness table. I am prepared to review the details of the supplementary appropriation document. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Premier. At this time I would like to ask the Premier if he will be bringing in any witnesses. Mr. Premier.

Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Does the committee agree that the Premier brings in his witnesses?

Sergeant-at-Arms, please escort the witnesses in.

Mr. Premier, can you introduce your witnesses for the record.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Joining me at the table to my right is the deputy minister of Finance, Ms. Margaret Melhorn; to my immediate left is Minister Michael McLeod, Minister of Transportation; to my far left is Mr. Russell Neudorf, deputy minister of Transportation. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Premier. Welcome, witnesses. General comments. Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First off, I do support the principle of the bridge project. I certainly believe strongly that this is the type of infrastructure that needs to be built in the Northwest Territories. I also believe strongly when I had asked last month about why haven’t we sought federal government support, why hasn’t the federal government come to the table to assist us with this project. I think that seems to be a significant gap in this process that has been happening.

Today I tabled an article from a magazine called Bridge Design and Engineering. It is a magazine from the UK. It defines itself as the definitive publication for bridge professionals worldwide and they do sort of an overview of the Deh Cho Bridge, oddly enough. It is an article called Remote Control, which I am still trying to figure out why they called the Deh Cho Bridge article a remote control. But what was interesting and stunning about this overview is it highlights a particular section of interest. It says, an independent review of the original superstructure which was done by TY Lin International identified that there were numerous deficiencies and felt that the bridge was deemed unbuildable.

Mr. Chairman, I think that really starts towards the beginning of the problem, which is ultimately the government in the 15th Assembly went forward,

signed a bridge agreement, as we have all heard. It was a fixed price, fixed contract and completed design and yet that seems to be where the real problem started. I am not talking about the decision to do the bridge or not. I mean, that is a different issue altogether. Ultimately, once we were albatrossed with the deal, there seems to be problems from the bridge outwards and they just haven’t stopped.

Mr. Chairman, my opening comments are more reflective as to what are we doing with respect to stuff like that. TY Lin International is a significant corporation that reviewed the bridge. It is an extremely strong statement to say that the original bridge was unbuildable. A company doesn’t make

that type of statement willy-nilly, if I may put it as simply as that.

I am kind of wondering if our government is pursuing the original bridge design or some of these costs. I think some of the costs have all been associated to the fact that the bridge was designed poorly and it was sold in a context that it was a complete design ready to go for a fixed price.

Mr. Chairman, at this point, that is really where my concern will start. Although I have a number of concerns as we go through this process, I am sure that they will all come to light through that.

I would like to hear more about how the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation will be involved and what role they will play. I would like to hear more from the Minister when we get into this concession agreement and how will it be inactive when it relates to the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation.

One of the things I did was when I pulled the Deh Cho Bridge Act the other day, I was curious to find out if any of the regulations at this point have been drawn up. If they had been drawn up, I certainly would like to hear a little more about that.

Mr. Chairman, just for opening comments, I think my real concern will begin with the fact that an independent review had, I think, hit the nail right on the head, which is the fact that this government accepted a contract, signed a contract on good faith that the bridge was a complete bridge ready to go and we find out later it was not. We spent a lot of time, a lot of delays associated with money and a lot of frustration that was caused throughout this House.

I still believe in the bridge project in principle. I think that it will provide a significant legacy infrastructure for this Territory that I do believe needs to be built. I wonder if one of our fundamental problems have to do with the design of the bridge and us accepting that contract under that theoretic good faith that it was ready to go. I would certainly hope that either the Minister of Transportation or, of course, the Premier, who is acting on behalf of the Finance Minister I believe, will assure me that our government is taking appropriate steps to pursue the original bridge designer, who I think is one of the fundamental problems of this.

Notwithstanding that, I certainly think that the price our government did sign on to this project was certainly outrageous and there certainly could have been more ways to work this project. Setting the size and the price of the bridge aside, it really comes down to the bridge being designed with significant fault and are we pursuing that at this time. I’ll leave that as opening comments. I will certainly have questions as we proceed through.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’ll be happy to provide some opening comments on the Supplementary Appropriation No. 2 that’s before us. I’m having a great deal of difficulty with supporting this. I’ll say that up front. I have been critical of the project from the very beginning. I mentioned earlier today in my Member’s statement that I just see one bad decision being compounded by another bad decision. For the life of me I cannot understand why we’re not going to complete an audit of the project. That is going through the books of the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation, going through all the records of the engineers, getting a full stock of where we’ve been in an effort to try to move forward.

I’m not interested in going back in time and going over who did what and when, and playing pin the blame on the donkey. I’m not trying to do that. What we have to do is try to move the project forward in a coordinated way. I know the Department of Transportation is committed to doing that. You see the project management team that’s been assembled. It’s a comprehensive one. It’s a good one. It is a good team. But in saying that it’s a good team, why wouldn’t we, when a project is basically stopped midway...and I debated this with the Minister who says it’s 50 percent done, but I don’t quite agree with that. I don’t think it’s close to 50 percent. When a project is stopped mid-stroke you should at the very least find out how you got to where you got to before you enter into any contract and commit any more public dollars to a project like the Deh Cho Bridge Project.

Why we would be in such a rush to get into a sole-sourced negotiated contract with one company, again, for the life of me, I do not understand. I mentioned it earlier and that’s probably why I’m not going to end up supporting this, because on principle I think it has to go through a complete audit. We have to get a handle on where it’s been in order to move it forward. I don’t see it happening and I don’t understand how you can do an audit with one hand and sign a contract with another hand and the new contractor try to carry out the work when there’s all this other stuff hanging in the background. It’s not something I think is a good decision. With all due respect to the Minister and the government, I disagree with them 100 percent that they’re doing the right thing by negotiating a contract with one company on this bridge, given the history.

Given the history we obviously didn’t learn anything through the exercise with ATCON. That was a negotiated sole-sourced contract with ATCON as well; supposedly a fixed-price contract. It never ended up being that way and even the numbers are moving around as we speak. The numbers we talked about, and the Minister knows what those numbers are, when he came before us, there’s a difference between what we were told was going to

be signed with Ruskin and what was actually signed with Ruskin. There’s a bit of a difference there. And that all happened in the past couple of weeks. What work is that for? Is that for work that we have already supposedly paid for? I think it’s for the approaches or the abutments.

Again, things are just changing. For me what this exercise is going to be about is trying to get some things lined up and try to get a chronology of events of when things were said, when things happened, and try to make some sense of it. Right now I’m at a bit of a loss as to why some things are said when they’re said and why other things are left out or omitted when I believe the government knew full well what was going on and didn’t divulge that to Regular Members.

Now, interestingly, I had some questions for the Minister of Transportation earlier about the lenders and the more I think about it, when the lenders gave the Government of the Northwest Territories, through the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation, access to that construction account to the tune of about $75 million, they did so because they were interested in seeing the project move forward, like us. It was a good relationship. That relationship soured at some point in time. The lenders got so that they locked that construction account up in December of last year. No money was flowing out of that construction account. When they write letters -- I’m not sure who the letter went to, the Minister of Transportation, the Premier, or the Finance Minister – to our government, you can rest assured that somewhere in those letters it just doesn’t say N-O, you’re not getting any more money. It should specify exactly the reasons why the lenders do not want to proceed with lending money out of that construction account. I would like to at some point in time see the letters that we got back from the lenders and see exactly what they say. I think those letters would probably paint a pretty good picture of why the lenders were getting scared. Did the government act when they should have acted? Did they wait?

Here we are, it’s almost April and the big reason why the government didn’t want to go to tender on the second half of this project was all about timing. They always said it would set the project back a year. I don’t buy that it’s going to set the project back a year. I think if we had gone to tender -- and Ruskin could have rightfully bid on that contract and won the contract, who knows what would have happened -- at the end of the day I could rest assured and tell my constituents that we managed the public purse the best way that we could, we went to tender, we got the best price, we had a design that was finished and we got the work done. That’s what I want to be able to tell my constituents. I can’t tell my constituents that because I know that’s not the way things happened. We negotiated a sole-sourced contract with one company. And

that number is moving. It’s a moving target. Why is it a moving target? Because I do still believe today that there are things in that design that are unfinished and are going to cost us more money as we move this project forward. I hope I’m wrong on that, I really do, but I really don’t believe that I’m going to be wrong.

I also don’t believe that the bridge is going to be constructed by November 2011. I really do not believe that. And I do not believe for one second that this bridge is going to cost the government and the taxpayers in the Northwest Territories $181 million. It is going to cost more than that. You can mark my words that it is going to cost more than that. I hope I’m wrong, but it is going to cost more than that.

There are other issues at play that I’m going to address and questions as we move forward. I want to give other Members a chance to provide some opening comments. I want to know quite specifically when the government signed a notice to award the contract to Ruskin or when the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation signed that contract, when they signed the intent to award, when they signed the notice to proceed. I want to know who signed it.

I want to know what legality the Government of the Northwest Territories has on that contract that the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation signed with Ruskin. Where do we fit in all this? I think that’s an important aspect as well. I also want to know if it’s not too late to get out, to stop what we’re doing and take stock of where we’ve been and where we need to go, and get the best price that we can. Go to the marketplace for the second half and move on. That’s what people want to see us doing. They don’t want to just see us giving out sole-sourced contracts to the closest guy there. That’s what we’re doing. It doesn’t make much sense. The only argument I can see is the fact that we might have to pay some interest, but nobody’s proven to me that going to the marketplace is going to save us $15 million or $16 million. We have to pay $8 million if it’s going to go past November 2011. That’s going to be a big issue. It’s going to go past November 2011 guaranteed. I almost guarantee you that. It’s not going to be finished by then.

I’ll have a lot of questions here and I look forward to asking them and trying to get some answers.

Next I have Mr. Abernethy.