Michael McLeod

We certainly don’t expect that this project is going to have impact on other projects we’re working on. We have a huge capital budget for this department and other infrastructure departments across our government. Our capital budget for this year is $125 million, which is probably the biggest capital budget that we’ve experienced in the history of this government. It’s probably larger than the total of all the capital projects budgets that we had a short few years ago. It’s challenging in itself to have all the projects out the door and delivered. We’re working very hard to have that done.

As I...

I think right now one of the most concerning issues was to try to get the project stabilized in terms of having a new contractor in place and having all the material ordered and people on site and dealing with the transition. That is taking place right now. The construction, we feel, is now coordinated and it’s going to move forward and we don’t expect that will be affected.

There is a lot of work that’s been done in choosing project management and the new companies that are on the site. We certainly have done due diligence and looked at the background and checked out references and looked at...

The Member is referring to something that we’re trying to avoid right now. There is no calculation for something that’s not concrete in terms of a project that is certain. The Taltson project has not been something that’s been committed to and is not part of our forecast and has not been calculated in the traffic results. However, we expect that the formula that was used that has traffic volumes requiring tolls or paying tolls, commercial trucks, and the cost of operations of the current services, such as the ferry and ice bridge, along with a subsidy would suffice for covering the debt, which...

Mr. Chairman, there’s nothing that we’re aware of. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, right now we’re looking at servicing some of the cost from this project through revenues generated from tolls. We expect for the first year it’s going to be around $8 million that we would have to use to service the debt and half of that we would expect to raise from tolls. The other portion would be from money that we’re already spending on the ferry service and the ice bridges, and also there’s a contribution from our government on an annual basis.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is correct; the intent to cover the cost of the bridge was to be in the form of toll revenue which we expect will be about 50 percent of what the costs are and also the savings from the operation of the ferry service and the ice bridge, which at the time the calculation was around $1.7 million -- we expect that number is now over $3 million -- with also another contribution from our government of $2 million. That’s the plan. The actual for the first year of the cost of the interest and principal and operations of the bridge will be around $7.9 million.

We have to be clear that we are not looking at the issues in terms of deficiencies as a public safety issue. I know the Member has been trying to make it an issue that would jeopardize the whole project in terms of safety. That’s not the case and I think we should be clear that’s not the case. We’ve done analysis on a number of the things that are being raised. We have a list of deficiencies that we are going to be dealing with. That’s standard. We certainly can reassure the Member that we have looked at the scour rock this past year and we know what has been put down there. We can share that...

The scour rock that was used on the south side was not approved. So let’s be clear on that. Whether it floated down to, where did you say? Norman Wells? We’re not sure on that. We’re doing an assessment of what has remained. We don’t expect that rock would have to be replaced, but we would have to provide additional armour rock to make sure that the piers are protected properly. We are going to be doing an assessment. That deficiency has not been signed off. It has not been approved.

First of all, we didn’t know in December. Our last drawdown through the process was in December. We share all our information with the Members, as the Member knows. We give them all the information. We’re not trying to hide anything. Officially we were told no more drawdowns in writing March 1st. We had discussions with the lenders in February where they indicated to us that there was a notice of default and as a result we had further discussions about the ability of being flexible. They approved and agreed with us that they would be. However, in the following letter we were told that on March...

Mr. Chairman, the $4 million is a carry-over from last year’s projects that were held back as a result of recognized deficiencies, and that’s what we’re going to be using to bring it forward into this new contract to address the deficiencies.