Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yesterday, the Office of the Auditor General of Canada tabled its report on the Stanton renewal project. The conclusion is that the GNWT cannot show this project provided good money for -- good value for money. Decisions were made without evidence and analysis, including changing from a renovation to a new build. Documents were found missing, including conflict of interest forms. The GNWT's unable to approve that $71 million was spent on northern businesses as it had previously claimed. The list goes on, Mr. Speaker. Deputy auditor general Andrew Haze said he was, quote, perplexed by the series of decisions that were reached by the government without doing updated analysis to identify value for money. Perplexed is a good word because if you were listening to the government at the time, you would have been told everything was fine.

Mr. Speaker, I used to call this a $1 billion hospital much to the chagrin of the health Minister of the day who insisted it was a cool $600 million. Well, Glen, it turns out I was right. $1.21 billion, 62 percent over budget.

Mr. Speaker, I've spoken about the need to better control our infrastructure costs before in this sitting of the House. This audit further adds to my concerns that our project management of major capital is lacking. At the time of Stanton renewal, this House was told the project was on time and on budget with tens of millions of dollars being paid out to northern businesses. Now we know that wasn't the case.

If anyone needed to wonder why this government is in such dire financial straits, then look no further to the persistent failures to ensure good money -- the good value for money analysis across numerous projects, including the bewildering decision to rent our own building for 30 years to the staggering cost of $78 million, something the finance Minister of today is defending as a good decision despite the opinion of the auditor general.

Mr. Speaker, the government is now saying things have changed - policies, practices, monitoring, all these things are now in place. But here's the thing. Back in the day, many of those exact same policies were in place; they just weren't followed. And because those decisions weren't followed, Northerners have been saddled with hundreds of millions of dollars of debt for the next 30 years. And, Mr. Speaker, we will deal with this report in good time, but if anyone thinks the GNWT has changed its colours and identified good value for money, I have a $90 million windmill in Inuvik to sell you. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.