David Ramsay

As a government I believe we have to be searching out opportunities. I disagree with the Minister. Here’s an opportunity to get some real economic development in one of our communities here in the Northwest Territories. I’m talking 300 jobs, multiple families with the possibility of moving to the Northwest Territories, increasing our revenue stream, business opportunities, contract opportunities for businesses. This is something the government has to pay attention to. They have to have some vision, they have to have some passion, and they have to have some vigor. They’re low when it comes to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, Yesterday, we had the Minister of Justice in front of us during Committee of the Whole and I wanted to expand on a couple of items related to the Department of Justice that I brought to his attention.

The first is an issue that I’ve discussed with him previously and that is the fact that there are a number of aging penitentiaries across this country that sooner or later the federal government will have to replace and look at building a new federal penal institution somewhere in this country. My belief and desire is for that facility to be located here in the Northwest...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to report to the Assembly that the Standing Committee on Economic Development and Infrastructure has reviewed Bill 11, An Act to Amend the Workers’ Compensation Act. The committee wishes to report that Bill 11 is now ready for consideration in Committee of the Whole as amended and reprinted. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I agree with the Minister. I think, as a government, we should be all over the federal government when there comes any opportunity to get federal investment in this Territory. Again, Mr. Speaker, I don’t see that happening with this government. I’ve been talking about some ideas here for the last two and a half years and, you know, we’ve been managing, it seems like bouncing from issue to issue to issue without really concentrating on some bigger prizes, Mr. Speaker, and those are the opportunities that exist in trying to get some federal investment here in our Territory. I’d like to ask the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I want to ask some questions. I suppose I’ll ask some questions of the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment, and it gets back to some of my previous questions to the Minister of Justice. From where I sit, Mr. Speaker, I think the government is letting opportunities slip past us. I believe we’re soundly asleep at the switch oftentimes, and I think somebody has to ring the alarm clock and wake these guys up over here so that they understand that there are opportunities out there. We have to multi-task. If you’re a Minister, I don’t understand how a...

Like I said, if we don’t pursue opportunities, there are other jurisdictions in this country. I know Saskatchewan, Alberta, Ontario are very aggressive in pursuing opportunities. You can rest assured their Members of Parliament and provincial Legislature are out there beating the bushes with the federal government, looking for the federal government to invest in their provinces. We’re not doing that and I think this Minister has to have that discussion. It’s not going to cost us anything to write a letter or sit down with that Minister of Justice and talk to them about the possibility of a...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Justice. Yesterday I had the opportunity to raise a couple of issues with him. The first one I want to talk about is the idea of locating a federal penitentiary here in the Northwest Territories. Yesterday the Minister stated that because they were dealing with the courthouse issue and had to set some priorities, they weren’t able to get to this idea that I had brought to him a while back.

The courthouse project has not been on the capital plan at least for the past two years, so I’m trying to make some sense of the Minister’s...

I appreciate the response from the Finance Minister. I know we need to move forward. There’s no sense crying over what hasn’t happened in the past two and a half years that this government has been responsible for this project. Nobody wants to take responsibility for the inaction. That’s fine. But going forward -- and I’m talking about from right now -- somebody has got to take this project on and take responsibility for it being delivered effectively, efficiently, on time, and on some kind of budget. We can’t have an endless pit of money being dumped into this project with nobody taking...

Just another thing, you know, a lot of Members have talked about it and I’ve talked about it in the past, but the Government of the Northwest Territories, the Department of Transportation has obviously had to incur some costs. I mean, we’ve got a couple of senior staff here that are on the project management team. You know, I’m sure we’ve paid for some of the design review work that’s been ongoing. How are we accounting for that? Is that not incorporated in the budget of the bridge or should it be incorporated in that? You know, if we can get some of the costs back as the Minister has...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Under the project coordination under the org chart for the Deh Cho Bridge Project and Construction Management Structure, maybe it’s blacked out somewhere, but under the project coordination I don’t see Associated Engineering anywhere under the project coordination heading. Also, under that project coordination heading I’d like to ask the Minister or deputy minister who has experience building a 1.1 kilometre bridge across a river anywhere on this project coordinating team.