Next I have Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to continue on with some questions that I had earlier. First of all, I had a question about when we were here during the last sitting of the House and it kind of touched a nerve with the Minister of Transportation and that was the fact that ATCON had gotten the contract for $165 million and weren’t bonded to perform that work. I know they have a line of credit. The government had access to a line of credit for ATCON’s work and performance on that job, but I’m just wondering what assurance, and I think I’ve heard the Minister say this, but I want to get some more clarification on whether, in fact, Ruskin, in the completion of the second phase of this project is going to be fully bonded in their performance of that work. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Minister of Transportation.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, the previous contractor had security in the project and the security has been deemed still good. Going forward with the new contractor we have performance bonds for this company also.

Is the work going to be fully bonded to the maximum extent or are they just going to have a $1 million bond on a $72 million job? I mean, what are we talking about? They could have a $500,000 bond, for all we know. What’s it going to be? Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, this company is bonded as we would bond any other company with our projects. They have a 50 percent performance bond that they provided.

I thank the Minister for that and I’m glad to hear that’s the case. It’s interesting, I guess, when you start talking about the deficiencies, and again I want to be as clear as I can be, the Minister I believe I heard him talk about another one of the deficiencies as being compaction and to me that would address the approaches, both north and south, that that work was previously done and that was one of the deficiencies. I understand we’re paying again an additional $4 million under the new contract to address the deficiencies on both of those approaches. Is this work that we’ve already paid for and are we paying for it again? Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, the $4 million is a carry-over from last year’s projects that were held back as a result of recognized deficiencies, and that’s what we’re going to be using to bring it forward into this new contract to address the deficiencies.

Mr. Chairman, I’m just wondering if the Minister, and again my whole reason for asking these questions, Mr. Chairman, is to make sure that we are proceeding on this project knowing everything’s that’s out there, knowing where the deficiencies are and, you know, up until today it was the first time I heard the Minister talk about compaction, first time I heard the Minister talk about scour rock, and I’m glad to see that now we’re getting somewhere. I think that’s the level of detail that people… I’d like to know what we’re getting ourselves into here. In that, I mean can the Minister provide the Members of this House with a detailed list of the deficiencies on that Deh Cho Bridge Project and what it’s going to cost us to get these deficiencies fixed? Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, I don’t believe with any projects that we discuss in this House that I’ve ever brought forward a list of deficiencies, whether it’s the Inuvik school or any other project. I don’t think the request for that type of detailed information as to bolt holes and bolt sizes and scour rock and things of that nature ever had been debated at this level. If the Member wants, we are compiling, and we do have, a list of deficiencies. I would prefer to provide it to them with some comments as to where they are in terms of resolution and plans to deal with the issues that were brought forward. We are right now waiting for that to be developed and it’s being developed and we certainly will share it with the Member. He’s raised concern and we can bring that, and we can make it standard practice as we talk about projects, we start talking about deficiencies. It’s a level of detail that is not normal to have on the floor of the House of a government. Thank you.

And this project has never been normal from the word go and I’m raising these issues out of the… You know, it potentially could be a public safety issue and it could potentially cost

this government more money to fix deficiencies if they’re not corrected now. It will cost us more money down the road to correct these things.

On the scour rock, I’m just wondering, is the plan to go down under the water and see what’s left of that scour rock, and if we are going to get under the water, are we going to inspect the pier footings and the workmanship of those piers under the water? Thank you.

We have to be clear that we are not looking at the issues in terms of deficiencies as a public safety issue. I know the Member has been trying to make it an issue that would jeopardize the whole project in terms of safety. That’s not the case and I think we should be clear that’s not the case. We’ve done analysis on a number of the things that are being raised. We have a list of deficiencies that we are going to be dealing with. That’s standard. We certainly can reassure the Member that we have looked at the scour rock this past year and we know what has been put down there. We can share that information with him if that’s the kind of detail he wants. We can sit down with him in the next little while, once we complete the analysis. Because I’m sure he’s going to want more information as to where we are in terms of resolving some of these issues. We can provide that private briefing for him, so he can look at the design, look at all the issues that he keeps raising in terms of specific detail. If that information was being provided to him by somebody else, then it’s obvious that it’s by somebody who has been on the project and I think there is an obligation for that person to come forward. If he’s very concerned that there are safety issues, I think it’s from a professional standpoint and an ethical standpoint, that person should come forward and should not hide behind a politician and keep feeding information that should be brought directly to our attention. If that’s something of concern, then provide it to us.

Let’s not throw pieces out there and say this is a safety issue. Scour rock right now is not a safety issue. Bolt holes, bolt sizes, length of bolts, some things that need to be cleaned, I recognize as deficiencies. Is that public safety? No. It’s obvious that we are getting down to some very specific details of this project and we just about have to start bringing in engineers if we are going to start getting into more detail.

I, again, from what I know, have concerns over some of these deficiencies that were brought to the department’s attention on a number of occasions. That’s what I know. I can’t say it any other way, they were brought to the department’s attention and the department chose not to act on it or the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation chose not to act on these things. That’s what I have been told. Again, I will take the Minister up if he wants to offer

me a private briefing sometime and I look forward to that.

One other thing while I have a few seconds here on the clock, I’ve always said this project would cost much more than the $181 million. With the $3 million contingency on the remaining work and the deficiencies that we talked about thus far, I don’t understand how we’re going to get by with a $3.2 million contingency on $90 million. That’s like 3 percent. It doesn’t give you much allowance either way and I’m just wondering is that just not a recipe for some more cost overruns as well that we don’t have a bigger contingency than $3.2 million.

There have been issues brought to our attention and that’s why they are recognized and recorded as deficiencies. We have inspectors that look at the work that was done. If the quality is not there, if the wrong material is used, if it’s not what the specifications call for, then it’s registered as deficiencies. We do have a little more than $4.5 million to deal with the deficiencies and that’s in the form of a holdback. There is some carry-over from work that was supposed to be done last year that hasn’t been completed. That’s around another $4 million and there is a $3 million contingency. Right now, there are no issues that have been identified that would require drawdown on this $3 million. Thank you.

I know the Minister has offered information he has which might be helpful to the Members with regard to the questions here, so if you have that information, it might be able to help assist in some of these questions. If you have it and it’s available, we could circulate it to the Members. Next I have Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I wanted to ask the Minister about other legal things that could be associated with the Deh Cho Bridge Project, some of the unresolved matters. For example, ATCON is in receivership and there may be claims outstanding that may be unresolved issues with the bridge. Is the GNWT likely to become involved in any legal actions related to the project? What matters might be unresolved that might cost the GNWT money? Thank you.

Minister of Transportation.

Mr. Chairman, there’s nothing that we’re aware of. Thank you.

That’s good to know. We’re going to certainly go through a process. Should the Ministers receive support from the Members on the appropriation bill, is there a mechanism to ensure this House and Members regarding regular reporting to us and through the process in terms of the questions we are raising tonight to ensure the time frame is on target, the quality of the work is being done and some questions that would help

us? Sort of like checkpoints through the project, so there is some accountability and some transparency in terms of going forward on the Deh Cho Bridge. Thank you.

As we have now moved towards assuming the debt and we are taking over the project, we also now will be responsible for communications and we’ve already made several commitments in this House regarding development of a website. That website is up and running and is being viewed internally as we work out the bugs and ensure that it’s of the standard that we expect. We will be making that information or that site available to the public. We are also intending to provide a newsletter type of information to the residents of the Northwest Territories on a scheduled basis. We want to continue what we started on last summer by providing fairly regular reports to all the MLAs in terms of issues that are coming up, issues that are resolved and have feedback on that front from Members so they can also provide us with information, provide us with concerns and provide us with issues that are being raised to them, so we can ensure that there is good communication all around. Thank you.

That’s what I was alluding to regarding the communication on this project. There are certain things you want to communicate to the public, certain things you want to communicate to specific organizations out there. There is also the communication process for Regular Members that members of the public aren’t privy to. You know, some of the briefings that we had are very helpful in terms of going forward with this project.

I’m happy to hear the Minister is going to put together a communication plan of various levels. It’s a very important asset that the GNWT will own and have on the books here. There are lots of other questions that could probably be shared through various communications. I guess that’s what I wanted to hear. Also what I also liked from the Premier is how this project will not have impacts on other projects in the Northwest Territories.

We have to really be clear with our people in the regions about this project. I think if we’re very clear with them that they will not have any impacts, as some Members have indicated, on other projects being done in the Northwest Territories. There are other bridges in the Northwest Territories right now being built. We need to maintain that these projects also receive some attention for their completion. That’s what I want to see if I can maybe just have the Minister or Premier comment on so it’s very clear to our people. We have to get this story straight out there for our people what it means to have this bridge on our books and how it’s not going to impact on projects that we have with Transportation or any other issues that we want to

build infrastructure in our region. I think we need to be very clear with that.

We certainly don’t expect that this project is going to have impact on other projects we’re working on. We have a huge capital budget for this department and other infrastructure departments across our government. Our capital budget for this year is $125 million, which is probably the biggest capital budget that we’ve experienced in the history of this government. It’s probably larger than the total of all the capital projects budgets that we had a short few years ago. It’s challenging in itself to have all the projects out the door and delivered. We’re working very hard to have that done.

As I indicated earlier, we intend to put together a good communications plan. We have already targeted a number of things that we want to do. We want to do a website. We want to do a newsletter. We’ve also taken on the practice of providing technical briefings to the media. We’d like to continue that as this project moves forward. We’ve already done two of those briefings and we want to continue that. We’ll also be providing site visits to media and other people that are going to be interested, as time allows and opportunity allows. So there is going to be a very enhanced communication position from our staff and we’ll certainly welcome any other suggestions that Members may have.

I’ll just close off with a question here. A comment and a question, I guess. When we first started out with this type of discussion around the Deh Cho Bridge, we always want to look at two things: the best scenario and the worst scenario. I think today we are dealing with the worst scenario. That’s reality. That also takes a lot of courage and leadership and foresight to deal with this type of issue. But we are dealing with the worst scenario today. It’s right before us.

I want to ask the Ministers about dealing with the worse scenario and this bridge being completed, what if some poor guy, something that happened out of our control with the bridge, if the bridge is completed and something happens that people can’t cross it for a week or so. Are we having that type of discussion with your planners about emergency alternatives being considered? God forbid that doesn’t happen. We need to look at something like that in case of things like that popping up. I’ll just leave it at that. Forward thinking about what happens when the ferry is out and people get antsy and cranky up here because they don’t have the ferry and can’t get their fresh products and all that. For us in the Sahtu it’s normal, but over here it’s a little different. I want to just ask that question, because I’m thinking about the high cost of living up in our communities. I hope

this certainly brings our cost of living down in the Sahtu and further north.