Tom Beaulieu
Statements in Debates
Another important part of the Mackenzie Valley Highway has been the Canyon Creek Road. Canyon Creek Road will give people the ability, who are eventually going to be building the highway, to access material for the highway. Canyon Creek proposal has been reviewed, approved at our level, GNWT. We’ve now included it in the overall Building Canada Plan bundle number two. We are presenting three different bundles to the government. We had bundle one approved last June. What we are hoping to do is have bundle two approved anywhere between January and March of 2016, and we’re hoping as soon as that...
I can’t make a commitment from the Legislative Assembly today to contribute to a proposal, but we would be pleased to look at your proposal. If there’s a proposal coming forward, the government would be pleased to look at the proposal. Thank you.
As a result of the act, the department will be able to develop a lot of the policies that would be directed to corporations, to be directed to the government, directed to the public on ways that they can reduce energy costs right across the territory and all aspects of our business. I’m hopeful that this act will allow government to work with the public and with industry in all areas to allow everybody to become more efficient energy-wise. Thank you.
That is the plan, that we do present a discussion paper that’s thorough to the next Assembly and that a lot of the legwork will be completed in the discussion paper. Hopefully, once that is done, soon after the next government they will start to move forward with the act. Thank you.
I can have that discussion with the department again. We felt like there was no real value in continuing to do a retrospective analysis. We are busy. There are a lot of projects on the go, and the department felt that with the retrospective lessons learned and the Deh Cho Bridge lessons learned, the Levelton Report before we took over and the Auditor General’s report at the point we took over were sufficient for us to move forward, was sufficient to provide information.
The Member is correct that doesn’t cover the financial and the political perspective of what occurred with the bridge, and I’m...
We do have that information on our DOT website. We felt that individuals who wish to determine what the issues were could find that information in a lot of different places. We looked at a retrospective analysis as a tool for ourselves when we move forward. It appeared that the main issues that people in the House felt that there was something wrong with the Deh Cho Bridge. What we were saying is the issue was that the contractor changed midstream, that the project authority changed in midstream. That is what seemed to be the issue.
As far as the department goes, we felt we did a very good job...
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don’t have the information here in the House with me on how far along the department is in producing a discussion paper for the Assembly. I will talk to Public Works today to find out if I can get an update for the Members in the House and provide that early next week. Thank you.
I don’t know specifically which lessons were learned from the very inception of the Deh Cho Bridge, but we do have lessons learned. They are on the website. We have made several presentations. The department of highways and marine division of Department of Transportation made a presentation on the Deh Cho Bridge Lessons Learned. That is on the website. Retrospective Lessons Learned on the Deh Cho Bridge, again prepared by the Department of Transportation, is on our website. The Auditor General’s report is also on the website. We charted out the recommendations of the Auditor General’s report...
Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. I don’t believe I said that the community or the public did not deserve a retrospective analysis. I indicated that we had done some work with the Auditor General in looking at the bridge at the point when we took the bridge over from another project authority and changed the contractor. We also had a report done by independent people, the Levelton Report that was done from the time the bridge started until we took over the bridge, and DOT had done a couple of reports on lessons learned. I felt that that was sufficient for us to move forward using that bridge as lessons...
I just have to clear something up here, $4.5 million carried over at the end of the last fiscal year. We had $90 million appropriated for this fiscal year that we’re in and that’s a factor as well. We’re, in this fiscal year, spending the money right now. So I just don’t want to leave that out completely and we didn’t just go from $4.5 and then jump to the $30 million that we’re trying to get now into the House, but there’s the advance, as the Members know, so that last year’s budget was, or this current year’s budget was $90 million.