Michael McLeod

Mr. Speaker, once again the Member is correct. There are a number of communities that were in a deficit situation historically for long periods of time. Given our previous method of allocating dollars, I am assuming that this is changing. I get the sense from my discussions, at least, that communities are better prepared as a result of the New Deal funding and their larger formula funding dollars that are being invested in the communities. However, that is going to take time. In this case, not everybody was ready to put a project forward.

Although we have probably the biggest capital budget in...

Mr. Speaker, I think all the players involved feel they have a recourse in terms of legal challenges. We are no different. I am assuming that we will see the fallout as the dust settles on this project. At this point, we are focussed on trying to get the bridge completed. We are really in a compressed time frame to get that done. We are, as I have stated, negotiating right now with a number of the players, the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation, the lenders and also a company that we hope is not going to be influenced by our discussion here today, but we are very close to concluding those discussions...

Mr. Speaker, I’ll release the information that’s available and that I can provide publicly. I have to reaffirm that we’re in negotiations and discussions are very sensitive with the Bridge Corporation, with the lenders, with the contractor. In fact, with the information we provided in the supp, it all, at this point, should be kept confidential, but the Member is wanting a statement in public and I committed to do that and I’ll do that tomorrow. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Member is right, we did a confidential briefing to the Members of this House as to an update and developments in recent days of the Deh Cho Bridge and we plan to have a public release tomorrow sometime. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I’m not too sure what the Member is referring to, but we don’t plan to have any signed deals overnight. We would like to have a better plan that we can present to the Members tomorrow or sometime next week, but that is something we’re still working on and we don’t plan to have any signed documents overnight. Thank you.

I recognize the Member is biting at the bit to talk about the bridge. It’s always been at the forefront of our discussions here in this House. Mr. Speaker, there are a number of reasons we are still requiring some time before we have a discussion in this House. First of all, we are still talking with the contractors and negotiating, in fact, for a new contract, the new contractors that have come on stream. Of course, we are also looking at making changes and having discussions with the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation. We are also engaging with the lenders and all of these are very sensitive...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today I am very pleased to welcome the Leishman family from Kakisa here. We had a good meeting today and they are down to visit and support one of their family members that’s in the hospital here at Stanton. I want to start off by recognizing Chris Leishman. Chris is down, along with his wife, Kathy, and Savannah and Christian. They drove up from B.C. Mr. Speaker, we also have Ian Leishman and his son Cameron. Ian is a captain on one of our ferries, the Merv Hardie. I’d like to welcome him and also their mother, Margaret Leishman. I’d like to say hello and...

Some of those were already tendered out and have been awarded, and we’re not able to move forward as a result of weather conditions and some other issues that have not allowed these projects to progress. I would expect that we’d be looking at coming out really quickly, as this money is being carried over.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member has listed a number of projects in his riding that have been deferred or carried over. Our intention is to get them all done for this year, on top of the projects that are listed; providing that the budget is approved, of course. We’ve had a lot of work going on in the area of Nahendeh, I think to the tune of almost $30 million worth of projects. We had a few projects that weren’t able to move forward as a result of weather and other issues, but we fully intend to have those done this coming year.

The Member is asking me to talk about some very specific details. I don’t have it in my memory bank to tell him how many kilometres are going to be done. I could tell him there was $5.4 million dollars planned for Highway No. 7 that needs to be concluded. We’re also planning to do a number of kilometres along Highway No. 1 to get chipsealed. That’s the information I can share, is the dollar amount. I don’t have the actual kilometres and locations.