David Ramsay

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, considering we have a substantial investment of public funds in Deze, I’m just wondering how we account or how we provide oversight as a government to the work of Deze Energy. I’ve been a Member here since 2003 and we’ve talked about power purchase agreements in this House for years and there still aren’t any bankable power purchase agreements that the corporation, the Hydro Corporation, the Power Corp and Deze have entered into with any mine. I’m just wondering, again, when can we expect any movement on power purchase agreements, because it is taking an...

Mr. Speaker, I thank the Premier for that. I was thinking more of the upfront cost, the initial capital investment of upwards of $700 million. How will that be arrived at? Thank you.

Unlike the Deh Cho Bridge, we have to base decision-making on concrete cost-benefit analysis that will completely take into account all of the environmental, social and economic factors not only for the shareholders but for everyone who lives here in the Northwest Territories. I will have questions for the Premier at the appropriate time. Thank you.

I’m just trying to make some sense of how this happens. The money gets turned off in December. The Minister comes before committee the last week of January and tells us everything on the project is going along relatively smoothly. Within two weeks of that meeting we’re informed that the government is looking for a $15 million supplementary appropriation from us and looking for our support for that to in effect loosen up the lenders and get the money flowing again. I’d like to ask the Minister when did the Minister exactly know that there was no money coming from the lenders. I know he says he...

Thanks, Mr. Chairman. Again, I wanted to get back to, and I hate to have the Minister of Transportation and his staff think I’m being petty or I’m getting into too much detail on this project, but, you know, excuse me, but if we dump $1.5 million worth of rock into the Mackenzie River that we shouldn’t have dumped in the river, I think somebody should be concerned about it and I hope they appreciate my concern.

You know, if those piers aren’t protected, eventually it is going to be an issue of safety for those piers and for the travelling public. So I don’t bring these up, I’m not just making...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have questions today for the Minister of Transportation. Again it gets back to the Deh Cho Bridge Project and the financial side of things. I want to ask the Minister of Transportation when exactly did the lenders turn the tap off on the project.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I suppose this is one scenario that we should be asking for the 10-year period rather than the five-year period, but that’s just to me delaying the inevitable. This is a situation that this government has gotten itself into and I think we have the responsibility or should have the responsibility to try to get ourselves out of it the best that we can and not saddle a future government with the debt.

My belief is we probably should take a look at the infrastructure spending next year on our capital projects and we should look at rolling that up and putting that money into...

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

---Unanimous consent granted.

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.

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...