David Ramsay

I think it’s important in this that the department gets out into the campgrounds in the North Slave region and talks to both the seasonal campers and the recreational campers that are out there, and develop some type of survey or questionnaire or something to that effect before waiting until the fall when everybody goes and packs it in for the winter.

I’d like to ask the Minister: are there plans in the works to get out there and talk to people while they’re actually camping?

Mr. Speaker, my questions today are for the Minister of ITI. It gets back to my Member’s statement from earlier today, where I talked of the proposed changes to the allotment, the duration and the pricing for seasonal sites here in the North Slave region.

Most of us are well-aware of the firestorm that built up a month ago regarding these proposed changes. Again, I wanted to thank the Minister for maintaining the status quo in the campgrounds. What I’d like to ask the Minister today is: why did the department take eight months to come up with some proposed changes and try to implement them...

Mr. Speaker, in the Budget Address there was no shortage of small announcements — $100,000 here, $200,000 there. So you would think on a project the size of the Deh Cho Bridge project that $165 million, committing the government for the next 35 years to expenses, and a bridge that supposedly — and I have yet to be proven wrong — is going to increase the cost of living.... The government says it's going to decrease the cost of living here in the North Slave region, but I beg to differ. I find it very strange that the government would leave a project the size of the Deh Cho Bridge out of this...

Mr. Speaker, that’s the problem: they didn’t go back out and they didn’t ask the businesses. They asked them in 2002 and in 2003. They didn’t go back out, prior to signing that concession agreement on September 28, and talk to the stakeholders in the North Slave region.

I would like to ask the Premier: what is the timeline for coming back with this look into exactly what happened, so the residents of the Northwest Territories can finally get a better picture of how exactly the government put $165 million at risk? Thank you.

I don’t dispute the fact that we should be doing some of that fine work that the Premier talks about, but we should have a foundation of information in order to base our decisions.

Mr. Speaker, I want to ask the Premier pretty much a point-blank question: how could any government sign a $165 million concession agreement three days prior to an election, with a five-year-old piece of cost-benefit analysis work being their only instrument that they have at their disposal? How could that happen? How is that good government, Mr. Speaker?

Mr. Speaker, I listened intently to the Premier's Budget Address yesterday and found it quite interesting that there was absolutely no mention of the $165 million Deh Cho Bridge project. It didn't get any billing whatsoever from this government. Mr. Speaker, is that not a strange omission?

According to the government, isn't this $165 million bridge supposed to reduce the cost of living? And wouldn't you think that the government would be boasting about this massive piece of public infrastructure? Or was it left out intentionally? Perhaps the government does not want any more attention given to...

Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned earlier, I listened quite closely to the Premier’s Budget Address yesterday and questioned him a little bit earlier today on the Deh Cho Bridge project. I’m wondering, and I think the public is wondering, as well, why the single largest piece of public infrastructure built here in the Northwest Territories didn’t get one iota of a mention in his Budget Address. Perhaps the Premier can offer an explanation to me and to the public on why that omission was made.

The Premier has a good point there: we need to come up with a vision; we need to engage the stakeholders here in the Northwest Territories. In this project the stakeholders weren’t engaged. They were engaged in 2002 and 2003. The government has yet to prove to residents in the North Slave region that the cost of living will not go up as a result of this bridge being built. Where’s that evidence, Mr. Speaker? I’d like to ask the Premier that question. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, my questions today are for the Premier, and it gets back to my Member’s statement talking about the Deh Cho Bridge project. We’re all well aware that the project is moving ahead and going forward. During the past four years I’ve probably asked close to a hundred questions on the Deh Cho Bridge project itself, trying to get a better understanding of what the government was doing and why it was doing it.

On February 8 I asked a number of written questions to the Premier in regard to what level of detailed information the government and Department of Transportation had at their...

Mr. Speaker, to me it’s not a matter of.... We all know what’s important to the residents we all represent here. We know that health care is important; we know education is important; we know we need to be spending some more money in certain areas. My point is that the government has taken it upon themselves to identify areas where they’re going to spend millions of dollars. In effect, they’re taking away my constituents’ voice at the table, and that of every other Regular Member who’s on this side of the House when we don’t have any input into where those millions of dollars are being...