Michael McLeod

Mr. Speaker, this is a management tool, as I indicated before, and each department has their responsibilities that lie within the contracting policies, and they have all read the terms and are all up to date on the practices of this government. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, of course, Public Works is responsible for the contracts awarded within the ranks of Public Works, and sole sourcing is one method that we use, it’s a management tool. There are criteria that sets out when it can be utilized and that’s what we follow. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, what we are doing here is we are transferring some dollars out of the Public Works Deferred Maintenance Program that we had identified to do some work on the air terminal building and it will now go into the Department of Transportation and will be matched up with stimulus dollars that we have been approved for. So it is a 50-50 cost arrangement and since we had money already in our budget to do the work prior to knowing that this was a project that was being considered for replacement, we are transferring it over. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, I’m not quite ready to do so. I would have to look at the impact of charging back to this project and whether that’s something we’d have to incorporate to all our projects. Right now we don’t charge back our time for any project across the Territories. That’s something I could have a discussion with my Cabinet colleagues. We certainly could calculate the amount of time that our staff has spent, any costs incurred by our department, but I’m very reluctant to say we’re going to charge it back. It may have a further bearing impact that we anticipate at this point. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks, committee, for allowing me to make a few comments on the Deh Cho Bridge.

First of all, I guess, in hindsight, if we knew what it was going to cost, we would have built it in 1958 when the project was priced at $6.2 million and we wouldn’t be at this juncture.

Mr. Chairman, first of all I have to point out that I don’t think that anybody is happy with the news that the project has a cost overrun of $15 million. We certainly didn’t want to be in the position to come and request additional funding. It is unfortunate but it is a reality.

Mr. Chairman, it is also...

We don’t have any firm dates as of yet. As soon as we do, we’ll make sure we forward it to the Member. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I was a little surprised to hear the Member raise the issue of the demolition of Deh Cho Hall. I thought maybe he was recycling his Member’s statement, or in the event that we were both talking about the same thing and he had some information that I wasn’t aware of. Mr. Speaker, we have made a commitment in this House to the Member that we would look at a salvage component to the demolition of Deh Cho Hall. We have not had any information, at least that has come to my attention, that all the materials are contaminated. We assume there is going to be...

Mr. Speaker, of course, the financial end of a contract, the end result of a good product, those things are all considered as we do an evaluation after the project is completed. Mr. Speaker, we have to point out that sole sourcing, of course, is only used in the situations that I outlined in the previous questions. So those are what we utilize as a guide and the end result is usually what determines whether the best practices were used in the case. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, right now we don’t have any current plans to be formulating a request to Ottawa. We don’t see a program that would allow us to have any dollars invested from the federal government. However, having said that, I don’t think that it would stop any informal discussions with the federal Ministers to see if there are any potential avenues for them to invest. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my information tells me that the last time a request was put into the federal government was in the life of the last government. It was brought initially forward to the Transportation people and I think the issue was then moved to the Finance department. In the government we have not sought to renew that request. Thank you.