Next I have Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, too, don’t feel that this bridge, never felt that this bridge was a benefit to anyone that I represent in this Legislative Assembly. However, from the very outset I initially believed that this government was in for the amount that was guaranteed to the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation in the concession agreement of something in the neighbourhood of $9 million to $10 million. I initially believed that. I didn’t know at the very beginning, in October 2007 when I was elected and there was discussion on the Deh Cho Bridge, that this government had guaranteed the loan of $165 million. That wasn’t made to clear, to me anyway. I don’t know how clear that was to anyone else in the House. However, to me, from

what I heard in the House, in exchanges I heard in the House, it was a $9.5 million loan guarantee was what this government was in for.

Now I find out that we’re actually in it for the full $165 million. I guess, you know, it should have been actually something that I could have figured out myself, actually, because the equity partner, the private partner didn’t have any equity. Therefore, how could a company without equity borrow $165 million to build a piece of infrastructure that really has a questionable return on investment? So questionable, in fact, the government would have to support the operations of the bridge by using all of the money that is now being spent on ferry operations and the operation and construction of the winter road that goes across the Mackenzie now at this point.

Now the bridge is at $181 million and on February 1st , I believe it was around February 1st , between

the 29th of January and February 1st , this

government returned to members in Priorities and Planning for a supplementary appropriation of $15 million. At that point my question was are we beyond the point of no return and should we stop the construction of the Deh Cho Bridge, pull the piers out or leave the piers in for maybe potential future construction; however, at that point, abandon the project. However, it appeared as though the costs at that time, which appeared to be fairly significant for getting nothing, were, I believe, well over $100 million already. So it seemed as though we were beyond the point of no return already in February when the last budget session started. We were advised that the project was now 50 percent complete at that time. The project now has four more piers, and we heard that it’s 50 percent complete now.

I’m not sure that the information that we went with on February 1st was exactly 100 percent accurate;

at least it wasn’t in my mind. I still, like my colleague Mr. Abernethy, feel that we have no options. I think our option to stop at this point would probably do further financial damage to the Government of the Northwest Territories than proceeding. However, I think it’s going to cost more than what is estimated at this point.

I’m no expert in bridge building, but I do see the trend going from what the initial cost was, I believe, in 2004, of about $52 million was the budget. It’s gone from that to a signing of $65 million to $165 million to $181 million. Now we’re finally out of the water and we are going to be essentially building the bridge over top of the piers at this point.

I said it before back on February 1st that I felt that

this bridge would cost a lot more than what is budgeted at this time. I still think it will. In the best-case scenario it doesn’t cost any more. However, we are taking on a major long-term debt. I do believe that the Government of the Northwest

Territories builds infrastructure, borrows the money to build infrastructure and then quickly, with surplus dollars in the immediate years preceding the completion of infrastructure, starts to pay it back so that at some point it is still potentially possible for the government to reduce its debt down to zero. It is still potentially possible. This makes it not possible unless we pay huge penalties. So we are kind of into this for a very long term.

I will question the government when I have an opportunity to. I am very interested in why the loan is structured the way the loan is structured. I am interested in why the government was not able to negotiate a term shorter than 35 years. I am not talking about the full amortization period here, Mr. Chairman, I am talking about the term of the loan. The fact that the amortization is 35 years and the term is 35 years meaning that at no point during the 35 years of the loan does the term actually expire and the government has the opportunity to renegotiate this loan under better circumstances. I am curious about why the government is not able to do that when we have an Aa1 credit rating. If that is something that is supposed be positive -- I am assuming that it is positive -- I will be concentrating on that because, like I said, the best-case scenario is we have major impacts for our government to provide infrastructure for the rest of the Northwest Territories. It has a major impact upon that.

As a representative of small communities like many of us around the table that don’t have infrastructure in place for our communities, we probably are not going to get it. That is because the money or the credit or the limits of our ability to provide more infrastructure to communities will be limited. We will be negatively impacted by the cost of this bridge even in the best-case scenario when this bridge comes in at $181 million. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. General comments. Next I have Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I feel like I have already said so much about the Deh Cho Bridge. It is probably the single topic that I have spoken to most in this Legislature in my 15 years that I have been an MLA. I don’t know what good it is to rehash everything that has already been brought up by other Members here today except I do feel obligated to my constituents to be on the record in this matter.

I think Mr. Abernethy did an excellent job of summarizing the situation where we find ourselves today.

Mr. Chairman, if we could argue that the bridge over the Mackenzie River is a useful piece of infrastructure that has merit, I guess the thing about the entire process that has been the most offensive to me as a Member of this Legislature, as an elected member, would be sheer inability to get

information in a timely manner that would have normally been involved, if this would have been available, if this process had been a normal capital planning and capital project process. I think that has been the most frustrating. We are trying to do our job as MLAs and to be accountable to the public. This is a piece of public infrastructure. I could go back at the many turns in the road, the many junctures where we tried to get information and the fact that it was the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation that was acting essentially as an agent for this project was the shield or the veil or the barrier that was put up to us that did not allow us that kind of scrutiny that we would normally apply in doing a good job of doing what we do, and that is to be accountable. That is one of the most frustrating things for me.

Would we have voted to spend $165 million of our capital on the Deh Cho Bridge had this not been done through this Deh Cho Bridge Corporation Act, and had this not come about the way that it did would we as a government have put ourselves in the position where we would have wanted to build something like this?

I think my colleague Mr. Beaulieu said that perhaps we wouldn’t have put this much of our capital budget into one project. Perhaps we would have spread it around to more communities, to more different types of projects, because $165 million or $185 million certainly represents a lot of capital infrastructure in a lot of places had we not done this.

But having said that, we are where we are today. We can’t change the past now.

It would be really sad going forward if this bridge turns out to have some structural problem with it. I think that would be the absolute insult on injury in this case, but we are assured by the Department of Transportation officials that every reasonable effort is being made to ensure the quality of the construction of this and that all industry standards are being adhered to.

As someone said, we are not bridge engineers. We are completely lay people when it comes to that kind of expertise. We are heavily relying on the commitment and on the word of the Minister of Transportation and his officials when they tell us that everything is above-board and everything is to the highest standards for quality. Because that would be quite unbearable to the people of the Northwest Territories to not only have a project that perhaps was not our priority and was not our way that we would have spent this money, but to have something that would be defective in some way going forward would be just an absolute shame.

I have absolutely no evidence that there is such a problem, but, as I said, we find ourselves where we are today. As I said in my Member’s statement today, one of the redeeming qualities of this project,

when we build a school or we build a hospital or build other types of infrastructure in the Northwest Territories, there is no way of generating revenue off of those. Those are straight outlay for capital and ongoing O and M. One of the redeeming qualities I suppose, if there are any of this project, is that if the traffic continues and if the tolls are collected, this debt can be paid off in a businesslike way for this piece of infrastructure. That is one thing that does make it unique. I hope the trucks keep rolling. I used to take the position that I didn’t support the bridge, but, well, as long as the people in Yellowknife will pay for it, I guess I could maybe just not lay awake at night and worry about it quite so much.

I always said it wasn’t going to impact the financial standing or situation of the rest of the people of the Northwest Territories, but if the plan going forward goes awry in any way, if there are problems with the bridge, if our projections for total revenues are wrong, I guess it will require everyone’s participation to now be involved in this project.

I suppose at some point in time there would have been a desire on the part of the people of the Northwest Territories to have a bridge over the Mackenzie River at Fort Providence. There are issues of inflation. There are issues of global warming that may have impacted the length of the season when we could have an ice road across the Mackenzie River. There are things that maybe hopefully we will look back on some day and say that it was good to get this piece of infrastructure in place when we did. I hope that’s the case, but I suppose only time will actually tell.

So like my colleagues who have already spoken, I don’t see any other choice but to support this today. I suppose I could say on principle and to be consistent with every position I’ve taken on this bridge, to be consistent I could, I suppose, vote against this. But I don’t think that would be the right thing for me to do. I hope that people out there in the public who might have been expecting me to do that, to really stand up against this, because there is a lot of opposition to this project and the way it’s been handled out there in the public, and maybe there would be an expectation that I would vote against it on a matter of principle and on a matter of sending a statement to this government. But the reality is that the bridge is half built. We’re the guarantors of the loan. The loan has been called. We have no choice but to step up to the plate on this project. But going forward, let’s do everything in our power as a department and as a government to ensure that we bring whatever we can to this to make it a quality project and a viable project from the cost-benefit analysis and the projections that we base this on going back many years.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Next on the list I have Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. At the risk of repeating some of what I’ve heard, I think for many aspects of this project many Members are on the same wavelength. I can’t believe even our government members here are feeling particularly good about this situation.

I think our first failure, in my mind, was the inability or lack of success at getting the government to determine what it would cost us to buy our way out of this project in the early days of the Assembly, as many of us explicitly and repeatedly requested. Nevertheless, we didn’t do that. We went forward and sure enough we’re where many feared we would be.

As we’ve heard, this project has both a checkered technical history as well as political history. I know amongst the public certainly, and among some MLAs, the concerns persist that the technical aspects have not been fully resolved and are we further buying a pig in a poke here with approval in going forward with this.

I guess I want to know that with the new managers we have now hired, technical people and project managers, will we start with a thorough examination of the work done to date, both onsite physical inspections, technical, almost forensic inspections, as well as the inspections of documentation to assure that indeed what we have to go forward with is sound. That will be a very important aspect to the foundation for both this Assembly and members of the public. So I would expect that would be done and that would be reported back to both the public and to Members of the Assembly.

The questions remain on what the role of the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation will be in the future. I think this needs to be resolved in a way that will not add to costs. If we can go forward without them playing a role and perhaps work with them in other ways that are productive and keep costs down, that’s something that I think we should entertain out of belated responsibility here again to our public and our taxpayers. I’d also like to see an assessment along with this appropriation of what our actual internal costs have been, and continue to be, and are projected to be. I’d like to see that reported again in the same way.

I’m wondering if I could ask a quick question before I go further here. Are the fiscal frameworks and projections that have been provided to us in committee, is that something we can speak to specifically?

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. I believe the agreement was we would allow everybody to make their general comments then we would ask for questions to the Minister, but we will have an opportunity to rebut your general comments after the Ministers have responded to the questions they are being asked now. You will have time to debate the response after we hear

back from the Ministers on your questions now. So to be fair to the other Members, I think we’ll just keep going through the other Members, because we still have five Members on the list.

Okay, Mr. Chairman. So I can’t get that clarification before, so I’ll speak in general terms here.

From what I’ve seen of the fiscal frameworks and projections, they were developed with densely rose-tinted glasses. They include projections that we’ve never achieved, to my knowledge. I’m wondering how many years we will be over our debt limit. I know that what was indicated in those frameworks is clearly not reality.

It speaks to the fundamental aspect that we need to know. I think we’re boxed in. We need to do this. But the most important thing to me is that we do it with a full appreciation of what the implications are so that we can best manage those implications. If we don’t do that, we’ll be again seeing things happen and reacting to specific events sort of randomly as opposed to in a planned way. Rose-tinted projections, we know that’s not the case. They look great, but the world just doesn’t work that way. If things went according to Hoyle it would be that way, but generally it’s Murphy that’s in control.

One of the aspects is this will be limiting our services and infrastructure in real terms. That’s why I think we need to get real projections to work with realistic projections and do what we can to minimize those impacts.

Finally, and I’ve mentioned this before in statements, how can we limit such irresponsible actions as those that have taken place and saddled this government with this situation in the future? To me that’s a question that is a serious question. We don’t want to repeat this in the future. So let’s put some thinking into that along with this.

I guess I’ll just finish by saying, along with everybody else, that this isn’t a great feeling, but we’re stuck with it. Constituents are contacting me, as well, saying don’t approve this. Unfortunately, that could be more costly than approving it.

Again, I hope the Minister heard my remarks about ensuring that what we have on the ground is totally sound and reliable and that will be confirmed and reported back to us before we go forward. I’ll leave it at that.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As stated by Mr. Bromley, at the risk of repeating things I feel that I must make my comments known in terms of this particular supp and how I feel about the bridge.

I stated last month in a statement that I was very disappointed that the supp we had to approve last

month was simply confirmation of my doubts about the viability of the whole bridge project. I’ve had concerns since I was first elected to this Assembly. Those concerns, unfortunately, were validated. That was very disappointing, very depressing, I think I stated at the time.

Like Mr. Abernethy, I am extremely frustrated. This project was one which I, like the residents of the NWT, inherited without any input. We came in after the fact. As Members we came in after the fact, some of us. Residents have never really had any input on this particular project at all and what we’ve come to now is an absolute worst-case scenario. The government backstopped this particular project, guaranteed that the project would go forward, that we would guarantee the funding for this project, and that the worst-case scenario, in my mind, is we now have to do that. We have to pick up the loan, we have to pick up the debt, we have to finish the project.

I’m particularly frustrated, I’m depressed, I’m disappointed because I feel backed into a corner, because I agree with Mr. Abernethy who, I think it was, said -- or Mr. Beaulieu, I don’t know which -- we have no option. We could vote the bridge down, but other people have spoken to that. It really isn’t a realistic option.

I, like others, feel that this project has been poorly managed from the outset. Whether that’s the fault of the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation or the fault of this particular government and our employees within the government I’m not very sure. I do know that we, according to the concession agreement, I think there was an opportunity for a project management board to be established. One was established. It was a two-member board. I would have thought that the project management board would have been the vehicle through which the project would have been overseen and that there would have been these two individuals keeping a fairly tight lid on what was going on and monitoring what was going on and making sure that the project was being managed properly. Apparently they really only looked at financial matters and didn’t really have much of an oversight in project management, if my understanding is correct. From what I understand as well, that board was disbanded last summer. So there hasn’t been any real work for that board since some time last summer. I have concerns relative to the management of the project and sort of how we got where we are.

I also have a number of other concerns. One of them particularly is some of the figures that we are being advised in terms of the repayment of the loan and of the debt. We’re working with figures which are at this point almost two years old. I have stated in committee, and I will state here for the record as well, that we need to have estimates, updated

estimates of the expenses that are going to be incurred for this project or this bridge once it’s done and estimated numbers for the revenues that we expect to garner from the bridge once it’s done. There are about four or five different items and I realize that it’s difficult to be totally accurate, but I’m asking for an estimate. I’m not asking for a totally accurate number. For me to make a decision on any matter -- and I’m being asked to make a decision on whether or not this supplementary appropriation should be voted in or out -- I need to have that kind of information. I can’t really accurately consider whether or not we should take on this debt if I don’t know whether or not our expenses and revenues are going to match when it comes time in November 2011 when this thing is presumably finished.

I think it is important relative to finances, as well, that we keep the Deh Cho Bridge expenses and revenues in a separate fund, that we treat them separately. They will be within the Department of Transportation, but I think we ought to set up a fund and deal with them separately so that we have an idea of what the total costs for this project are when it comes time and I think it will, as the years go by, provide a better idea of whether or not our expenses and our revenues are accurate and whether or not we’re spending too much or whether we’re making lots of money.

I have a concern for our future years’ budgets. I think that with the inclusion of this additional debt that we are going to probably have to revise our spending downwards somewhat. Again, we don’t have really good information on how our budgets are going to have to be revised downwards, but nobody has yet been able to tell me what the impact is in terms of, say, the budget for 2012-13 or 2013-14. How is this additional debt going to impact the amount of expenditures that we’re going to be able to have in those years?

I have a concern for the Deh Cho Bridge shareholders. They’re being pretty much chucked out, the baby with the bath water kind of thing. What are they going to be left with?

The other concern is what is going to happen to the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation? I know that things are being worked on, but when are we going to know what our relationship to the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation is? It’s, again, an unanswered question that I would love to know the answer for.

I do, like others, have a concern for public safety. If the suggestions and the rumours are true that we have some poor construction on a part of the bridge that’s already done, then I really am concerned that we may end up with a similar situation to what’s happened in Quebec a couple of times where an overpass has fallen in and I really don’t want us to go there. So we need to be absolutely certain that the construction is as it should be. And I trust the

information from the Ministers, but if we have any kind of a rumour, we’ve got to negate that rumour, we have to verify that, yes, the construction to date is absolutely solid.

I have a concern for the lack of a guarantee that we have for the accommodation that we’re going to get from the federal government, and I don’t want to call the federal Minister a liar, but we don’t have anything on paper and if it’s not a guarantee, then somebody could change their mind tomorrow and we don’t have anything that’s going to prove to us that, yes, this is actually going to happen and we are going to get the guarantee for our debt limit.

One of the things, too, I think is important is that there needs to be an acceptance of responsibility for this mess. Any of the people who were around when things were set in motion should accept some kind of responsibility for the situation that we’re currently in.

I’d like to mention a couple of things which I’ve mentioned before. They have been mentioned again, but they are important to me as well. One is that we have to do a complete analysis and audit of this whole project and an operational audit, not simply a financial. We have to know how things were set in place, what decisions were made, when and by whom, what actions were taken and the costs have to be tallied up. I have mentioned before that has to include our in-house or our in-kind costs that have been incurred by the GNWT staff, particularly the Department of Transportation. I feel very strongly that the Assembly has to set protocols in place that will ensure that in the waning months of an Assembly an action such as the one that was taken at the end of the 15th Assembly can’t happen

again and those things need to be set in place prior to the end of this Assembly and I certainly hope we can do that.

Lastly, I’d like to extend thanks to the GNWT staff, particularly at Transportation and to Ministers who have done a huge amount of work over the last several months to try and get this project salvaged. Even as frustrated as I am, I appreciate the work that they’ve done and I know that they’ve worked very hard to try and keep this thing on the rails and I do have to extend my thanks for that.

I certainly will have questions when we come to discuss the bill itself, but that’s all that I have at this time. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The next on my list is Mr. Jacobson.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Today hearing a lot of my colleagues in regard to this project, you know, it being the Bridge Act in the 14th Assembly coming into the time of being signed off in the 15th Assembly and now us having to deal with

this issue, I want to really make it clear for the smaller communities, like my colleague Mr.

Beaulieu was mentioning, that we have to let the communities know that this project is not going to affect us in the long term and all the projects that we do have on the books will stay as is on a go forward basis. I really think that anybody that’s going to be impacted the most out of this project will be the communities, so our hands are tied already. So you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t.

For myself, I will be supporting this motion on a go forward basis, but the government has to come out with a new rollout plan to tell us and tell the people of the Northwest Territories, and not only that, but with a game plan from their department in a big public blurp or a splash in the news in regard to this is our go forward, and hold them accountable to that. One hundred eighty-one million dollars is going to affect us. Speaking to the Premier, he said I really want to make this clear that it’s not going to be affecting the go forward for other projects in the communities. You know, I have projects I worry about for Ulukhaktok and Tuk and Sachs, Paulatuk, but I think on a go forward basis I was reassured that it’s not going to affect us, it would be totally separate and I really want to let the communities know and not scare them.

Like you said yourself, Mr. Chair, we have the simplest wording possible on the rollout plan for the people. It’s been almost two and a half years sitting here and this bridge has been and for some other of my colleagues it’s been a big issue and rightfully so. It’s a really important aspect of this government and our megaproject is this bridge. It will bring the cost of living down in Yellowknife and bring cheaper fuel, I guess, but at the end of the day all the taxpayers of the Northwest Territories are going to have to pay for this bridge.

So the only thing, like I said, the new rollout plan they have to come up with, letting the people know in the communities not to worry about the projects that are on the books. I look forward to listening to more of my colleagues on the go forward with this bill.

Thank you, Mr. Jacobson. There’s a motion on the floor. The motion is being distributed. To the motion.

Question is being called.

---Carried

We’ll extend hours until we conclude. We’ll just be carrying beyond our normal hours of adjournment. Next on my list, Mr. Jacobson, were you done?

Yes, I was, Mr. Chair. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Jacobson. Next on my list is Mr. Yakeleya.

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.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Next on my list is Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was certainly in the Cabinet on the day that started the whole process of the Deh Cho Bridge. I have no problem to say that I continue to support the bridge. It was a megaproject. It was good for the North and even after we were elected, up to a year ago or 18 months ago it was a timely project. The economy was going downhill and providing work and

opportunities to the North certainly was a good thing. However, I still continue to support the bridge. I ran out of friends in supporting the bridge, Mr. Chairman, only because of the debacle that has happened in the last year. My constituents, of course, are increasingly concerned. They have not said stop the project to me at any point, but they do want to say that as taxpayers they don’t want to be paying for it. If anything, the Minister and the Premier can explain to the public about some of the cost recoveries, efforts, that are built into the process as well as we approved $15 million not even two or three week ago. Of course, when that hits the media, the taxpayers are concerned that they are the ones that are going to be paying for it. Some more explanation for that is certainly necessary.

One of the reasons I support the bridge project is because myself and my constituents have always believed that some regions get their special projects and eventually somewhere down the line my region will get a special project. They are huge and big. They require a tremendous amount of resources, money, and we cannot do two or three at a time. Eventually I see a special project for my region. One of them, of course, is one of the entry points to us eventually getting involved in the Mackenzie Highway expansion. We foresee a bridge around Fort Simpson as well.

At the same time, within the last two and a half years the frustration of the Members come out here is only because we as MLAs, our power as MLAs is the most potent, I guess, when we assemble. That is the time we can question the government. We can unite as MLAs. We can lobby, persuade and pursue government for accountability issues. This is no different. My concern is how is government going to inform Members from this side of the House that Regular Members and Priorities and Planning committee throughout up until May and even throughout the summer months of progress of the Deh Cho Bridge, because it is no wonder my colleagues are distrustful. We spend a lot of time away from the House during the summer months only because we are doing our summer constituency work and I think it is up to almost two and a half months that we are away during the summer.

Once again, when we break from here, we are not going to resume until sometime in May. During those quiet periods of when our Legislature is not sitting, that we as Members are doing the hearsay things, get bits and pieces of information, but we did pass a motion in this House in the winter session as well as there was a commitment by the Minister to update the MLAs on a regular basis. I would like to challenge him. How is he going to best do that? I don’t know if it is by phone conferences or else pick an opportune time between now and the main session to get us all together and to

update us on the progress of the construction. That is what my constituents want from me. They want me to have the opportunity to be more watchful over the project.

I was never one for micromanaging government projects there, Mr. Chairman, but in this case there are lots of sensitivities around the Deh Cho Bridge project. I myself as an MLA want assurances and I want the confidence to report to my constituency that, yes, with government taking over the bridge, there is a good stable management team. One of the ways that we build trust, Mr. Chairman, is we have to have frequent meetings to ensure that things are on track, to ensure that a lot of the questions that myself and my colleagues have been asking are answered. I do not want to see that if we conclude here by Friday and we are not resuming again until May, like I said, but I think that there has to be a mechanism of bringing us back together as a full Assembly through some form or another to continue to update us on the progress of the bridge.

As well, during my questions in the House in the winter session to the Minister of Transportation around the Deh Cho Bridge, the confidence of the public needs to be reassured too. I think the Minister spoke of establishing a website, trying to put as much construction information on the website. We as MLAs get a lot of information, but the public deserves that very same information and I am reiterating what my colleague said about what we said all along: the public wants to know. They have a right to know as much information that they can get that is not confidential in nature. As we are progressing here, we have done lots of work. We released lots of information but it would be nice to consolidate it into a website. I am not too sure how they would do it, but I think that commitment should be followed up as well.

Another thing that we are taking over the bridge project. It is too bad about the way things played out there, Mr. Chairman. Having the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation and the community of Fort Providence building the bridge was a good intention. Unfortunately, there are many reasons for it. One of the biggest ones, of course, as they call it a P3 project. Hopefully we can learn from this because other communities will want P3 projects. They will want opportunities to build big infrastructures because there are some on the books. At the same time we have to learn from it and establish at least some type of guidelines that especially in this case we should have had assurances like we had to establish and managing a manager and engineers. There should be some criteria to follow and not just set up a corporation for setting up a corporation. I think by not being too diligent in that sense, we were certainly part of that failure. So hopefully we will learn from that and for the future, because we do need communities to work with our government and work towards the

benefit of the communities, be it financial or social or economic, whatever their benefits may be. Just because we got a bad experience here doesn’t mean that we cannot move forward with other projects there.

With that, if anything in my opening statements is pertinent here is that we’re going to need a mechanism for reviewing progress reports between now and May and then throughout the summer months. I believe that’s up to the government to come up with a solution like that.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Next on my list is Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was going to say I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore. I think all things being what they are, this has definitely been a pretty tough learning curve on how we handle P3s in the Northwest Territories. We, if anything, have had a very poor record on P3s. If anything, we should have probably done more due diligence on who our partners were and if they have the capacity to do the job. Also having a company heading your construction going bankrupt halfway through the project didn’t help either. I think we have to be realistic here that we hopefully will avoid these implications happening in the future. I think sometimes you have to learn from your mistakes and try to move forward knowing you have learned the hard way.

I think by learning the hard way I do have concerns coming from constituents where we are asking for capital projects, whether it’s the Aklavik road project to its gravel source and hoping we would be treated just like Tuktoyaktuk and their gravel source. For some reason we just didn’t happen to be on top of the list. We ended up at the bottom of the list. Now we’re being told to put an application in to the federal government. Well, dollars were spent from this government for that project. The same thing with regard to preliminary work on the Peel River Bridge. That stuff was done between myself and other parties. I think this government has to take those issues seriously.

We realize we spent a lot of money on capital infrastructure in the last number of years. If you look geographically at where those capital expenditures are and wonder why the small communities are having infrastructure challenges, we’re being told sorry, we can’t help you there. Sorry, we don’t have money for this. Sorry, we don’t have money for that. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a trail to a gravel source or a simple trail in the communities, we’re limited for that. Yet we still have health issues in the communities whether it’s about dust control, et cetera. For some reason this government does not seem to have the willingness to assist in those areas. When it comes to going into crisis mode we manage to find $15 million

simply by coming forward with a supp to say sorry, it’s a goodwill gesture and it will get us over the hurdle and we’ll get money back to move on the project. Then we find out coming here today that was not the case.

I think that as a government we are responsible for ensuring the public purse. I still don’t feel comfortable with the comments in the Premier’s statement about Mr. Flaherty going to Cabinet to get some sort of Cabinet approval for us to be able to do this. When is this going to Cabinet? When are we going to get something in writing? Will they have to make amendments to speak to our borrowing limit through legislative changes? I don’t feel comfortable simply saying that Mr. Flaherty is a nice guy. If Mr. Flaherty was such a nice guy he would have helped us with the investment in the pipeline. He would have helped us with the investment in the Mackenzie Highway. Yet the Conservative government has not done anything by way of major investment in the Northwest Territories to allow those capital projects to be funded by federal investment dollars. Yet the Aboriginal Pipeline Group and the Mackenzie Valley organizations are trying to work with them to get this stuff going. I think it’s something we have to be aware of, knowing that we don’t have control of the federal decision. It’s a Cabinet decision that has to be made in the federal government. Until that decision is made I cannot fully support this initiative going forward until I know for a fact that there was a federal Cabinet meeting where they made the decision to increase our borrowing limit to $665 million. I know you’re saying that, but for me saying it is one thing and going to the federal Cabinet table and making that federal decision is something that I’d like to see in writing from the federal Minister that the Cabinet decision was made.

I think it’s important that we as legislators realize that whatever way we make the decision we would have had to pay for this capital investment over 35 years. Now it seems like we’re going to have to put it on our books sooner than we thought. Because of that now we’re still going to have to make those payments over 35 years but under a different financial formula than we expected.

I think that we as a government have to realize that we have to take advantage of this opportunity. I know that through the capacity that this government has and with the Department of Transportation taking over this responsibility and having key people in key positions to oversee and manage the project whether it’s the building and construction of bridges or developing the engineering capacity that we’re hoping to keep in house after we conclude this project and also be able to move on to other projects that I’ve touched on such as the Peel River Bridge, the Bear River Bridge, the bridge across the Liard and replace the ferries going forward. I think we also have to realize that there are other big

projects on the horizon such as the pipeline or the Mackenzie Highway or connecting our communities to the Government of the Northwest Territories public infrastructure. As we can see from global warming and whatnot, we are going to have to make that decision to connect communities to public highways over land. We cannot depend on the winter resupply system as we’ve learned over the years. It’s going to get worse. It’s not going to get better.

I know that there is nothing we can do now. We’re in a bad situation. We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t. I think because of that we have no other choice but to agree to this supp going forward with some guarantees from the federal government in writing that the federal Cabinet has made the decision to increase our borrowing limit to allow us to work this through our debt without an implication on future governments going forward.

Someone who has been here since the 13th Assembly, we walked into a $110 million deficit that we had to crawl out of. We had to sell government assets, amalgamate departments, lay people off. That wasn’t easy. If we end up finding out that Cabinet for one reason or another has not agreed fully on this and they say no to Mr. Flaherty, then what? That’s the question I have and I’d like an answer to that one.

For me I certainly don’t feel comfortable going forward. What happens to that debt after five years? If they give us a five-year window, where does this fit in our books after five years? How does this move forward with future debt we will be assuming for other public infrastructure such as the replacement of Snare Hydro or replacement of major capital projects such as the Power Corporation increasing its debt?

The other issue I have is in regard to the Housing Corporation debt and what happens when we have to replace the $35 million supp funding for the housing rent supp? There are numbers out there that we still have to be aware of. I realize going forward, from what we’ve seen, that we haven’t seen much growth. If anything, our population numbers are dropping. Our corporate taxes are not what we were hoping they would be. I think for myself we have to get that guaranteed assurance from the federal government. Hopefully we’ll get that sometime this week or at least some assurance that Cabinet has dealt with it and made a decision.

I will leave it at that and look forward to the responses from the Minister.