Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m glad to hear that the matter is not concluded and that the Premier has expressed a willingness today to meet with the principals of Rowe’s Construction to see this matter brought to a satisfactory conclusion, understanding the challenges of the election period and so on. But I understand that Ministers will stay in their capacity and in their roles until after new Ministers or a new Cabinet has been elected and appointed, so I would still ask the Premier if this could be done still yet prior to that during the 17thAssembly?

I would like to ask the Premier if it is within his purview to instruct someone within the Department of Transportation to meet expeditiously with the Rowe’s to see this matter brought to a conclusion.

I am led to believe that there may be people in the Department of Transportation who are not as willing as perhaps their political masters or their political bosses would be to see this matter resolved, and I would like to see it resolved. If it takes political intervention, I’m asking for political intervention. Does the Premier have it within his ability to ask someone in the Department of Transportation, in the next short while, to meet with the Rowe’s, representatives of Rowe’s to find a solution to this situation?

The Premier and the Minister previously have spoken about legal liabilities. Again, this project is not without its challenges and difficulties, but the government and Rowe’s agreed to a referee arbitrator. In the arbitrator’s report it says I believe Rowe’s is entitled to a part of all of the money still owing to them up to the amount of the funds available under the credit agreement. I mean, these are nonbinding decisions of the arbitrator but the government and Rowe’s came together to go choose somebody to look at this whole situation and now here we are today and we’re just talking about the absolute legal liability.

I say this government has a moral liability, in the interest of good business and good business practices, to support a northern contractor who in good faith performed work for which they have not been paid. As I said, that amount has been written down substantially to take into account any of those questionable things that the Premier has made reference to. I think, like I said, you’re hearing pretty clearly from a number of Members on this side of the House that we are interested in seeing Rowe’s paid this $373,000. I’d like to ask the Premier, how can we get that done?

I’m going to join my colleagues on this side of the House today and also weigh in on this issue of the Deh Cho Bridge. I haven’t talked about the Deh Cho Bridge for a long time, and I’m going to direct my questions to the Premier, if I may, today.

We’re aware of the situation with the Deh Cho Bridge. It was fraught with challenges and setbacks and change in contractor and all kinds of things. Everybody was out there on the job doing their best to ensure the delivery of this bridge project as close to on schedule and on budget as possible. It is not a perfect science. Construction is not a perfect science, so when it became apparent that some of the scour rock had to be hauled from a further distance. There is such a thing as agreements between contractors and subcontractors. They aren’t always signed out there on the workplace, but the work gets done and it’s done in good faith. That’s what I want to say.

Now we have a situation here where we have a couple pots of money. We have money for deficiencies, we have money for holdbacks, and we have a northern contractor that was really owed about $1.3 million and that amount has now been written down to $373,000. You can see, the Cabinet can see, the Premier can see from the support on this side of the House that Rowe’s Construction is a territorial company, a long-standing territorial company that has come to the aid of the GNWT on many projects, because projects run into problems. It’s not a perfect science. Rowe’s has been, I think, a very good corporate citizen in the contracting that they have done for this government.

Now we have the situation before us today where we’re talking about $373,000. I’d like to ask the Premier: Is there money in any of the pots of money either from holdbacks or deficiencies that could allow us to pay this northern contractor? Everyone else has been paid. The Minister of Transportation has said we had to pay Ruskin, they built us a bridge. They didn’t build a bridge without the subcontractors there to help them and support them to get the job done.

Thank you, for that commitment. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m not sure who I should direct my question to today, but as I said in my Member’s statement, I have a constituent who took the matter of their own well-being, their own welfare, into their own hands and took the initiative to get themselves to a residential treatment program in the South, was granted the time off from work, works for the government, and the results of that treatment were highly successful, and now, though, looms the debt that was incurred.

So, Mr. Speaker, I don’t know who to direct this question to. Okay. Now, Mr. Speaker, I am asking for a discretionary approval on compassionate grounds for this young family to have these costs covered, and I want to say that the cost incurred is no greater than what it would have been had this government referred them out for treatment. So, it’s no extra cost. Thank you.

So, although we can say that we have a streamlined process, there are these one-offs and these unusual circumstances which do occur at times. For this particular case, I am asking this government, again appealing to these Ministers for discretionary latitude to help this family out now with this debt that remains for an initiative that they took to get the treatment that they needed and are now living a happy and healthy life. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Our days in this House are drawing to a close. I want to speak about something today that’s still very, very important in the Northwest Territories and that is the subject of addictions. I don’t think anybody who works for this government around this table could say that we have anything less than an epidemic proportion of problems with addictions, and we also know that it affects every aspect of life in the Northwest Territories, whether it’s justice, education, health, or just the well-being and safety of our communities.

So, as a government, we look for ways to address addictions, and I do commend the government for things like community counselling programs; the NWT Helpline; the Matrix program, which I just saw an ad in the Fort Smith newspaper for a Matrix program which outlined it all – it looks amazing – withdrawal management; on-the-land healing programs; and then also there are the residential treatment centres. We do not have a residential treatment centre in the Northwest Territories at this time, but we were told that with the money that was saved from the closure of Nats’ejee K’eh that clients who needed residential treatment could be referred to southern institutions and that this process would be streamlined, so we took that as something to be encouraged by, but still today we know that it is not easy for people to find treatment that want treatment.

In my constituency I was approached by a constituent, and I’ll make this story short, but this individual was going to the family counselling services and he hit rock bottom. He was faced imminently with the loss of his job – which was a very good job – with the loss of his family, with the loss of his home, and this person took matters into his own hands. They got out their credit card and they got themselves to treatment because they knew they were at that crossroads of absolute loss of everything they valued. So they got themselves to residential treatment in the South, on their credit card, and I want to say, happily, the treatment was fantastic, it helped so much. They returned to their community, to their job, to their family, to their life, and to this day remain sober, and this was many, many months ago that they did this. But the fact is that they had to do that on their own dime and that debt still remains now a cloud hanging over that family.

This is a compassionate government. I have gone to these Ministers before with one-offs and unusual circumstances and they have been compassionate.

Mr. Speaker, I’d like to seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.

---Unanimous consent granted

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, your committee has been considering Tabled Document 325-17(5), Supplementary Estimates (Infrastructure Expenditures) No. 3, 2015-2016; and Tabled Document 324-17(5), Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 2, 2015-2016; and would like to report progress, and that consideration of Tabled Document 325-17(5) is concluded and that the House concur in those estimates and that an appropriation bill to be based thereon be introduced without delay. Mr. Speaker, I move that the report of Committee of the Whole be concurred with. Thank you.