Jane Groenewegen

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The report or response to the interim appropriation report was read into the record earlier today, into these proceedings. Just to speak to those issues in a little bit more detail.

This is an unusual budgeting year because of the Territorial election. It throws us off our normal schedule and thus the need for an interim appropriation. I think the interim appropriation from an O&M point of view can be fairly well characterized as a status quo kind of extension of previous fiscal years’ operations.

I think that where we got into more concentrated discussion was around...

I would like to provide a report from the Standing Committee on Priorities and Planning. It’s a report on the 2008-2009 draft Interim Appropriation.

The Standing Committee on Priorities and Planning met to review the draft 2008-2009 interim appropriation between January 14 and 23, 2008. The draft interim appropriation included operations expenditures needed for the first quarter of the 2008-2009 fiscal year as well as a preliminary infrastructure acquisition plan. The operations expenditures are based on the 2007-2008 main estimates and do not include any new initiatives or reductions.

The...

Mr. Speaker, the cost of attending post-secondary institutions continues to rise. With the exception of funding for travel, our Student Financial Assistance Program does not have any mechanism to review these costs on a regular basis and adjust funding levels available to students. For example, Mr. Speaker, the University of Alberta has announced that for the 2008-2009 academic year, the cost of tuition will go up by 4.6 per cent, and the cost to stay in student residence will go up by 8.75 per cent. This is fairly representative of what occurs every year at most southern post-secondary...

I rise on a point of order under Rule 492(1) of Beauchesne’s Parliamentary Rules and Forms, which states that a Minister is not at liberty to read quotes for dispatch or other state paper not before the House without being prepared to lay it on the Table. This is in context to the Premier’s response to my questions yesterday when I was asking questions about the concession agreement.

On page 23 of unedited Hansard, Mr. Roland referred to eligible and ineligible costs that could affect different firms involved and also spoke to issues of guaranteed price, fixed-price contracts, refund of...

I move that we report progress.

Motion carried.

The Premier certainly has the opportunity available to him to pose that question to the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation after FMBS puts that work together.

Moving on to just a slightly different kind of accountability exercise related to the Deh Cho Bridge, I’d like to ask the Premier if he is aware of the exercise that is referred to as a peer review. There was previously a bridge that was under design and contemplation in British Columbia. It was the $1 billion Golden Ears Bridge. It was in B.C. At one point there was a call for a peer review of the financial circumstances surrounding this project...

Mr. Speaker, I believe the agreement with the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation does provide for what they call a value for termination on an occasional, from time-to-time, basis.

I would like to ask the Premier: has such a valuation for termination ever been contemplated by this government or shared with the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation in order to assess what it would cost our government to terminate this project?

I’d like to recognize two residents of Hay River South: Heather Copewell, who is here awaiting the arrival of a new baby; and my constituency assistant, Wendy Morgan.

As I have said on numerous occasions, both in the media and in this House and at other venues, as Regular Members, we have found it very difficult to obtain materials with reference to the Deh Cho Bridge project. I feel the Premier and the government have in fact portrayed our access to the contrary.

The concession agreement is something we have asked for on a number of occasions and only received an embargoed-type copy of it last Thursday. We were then able to look at a copy. When we finished looking at it, we must return it to the Clerk of Committees when we depart the room — I mean, it has...

Mr. Chairman, your committee would like to consider Bill 1, Interim Appropriation Act, 2008-2009, in Committee of the Whole today.