Wendy Bisaro

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Transportation. I would like to follow up on my Member’s statement and ask some questions about the Deh Cho Bridge review, which is apparently not now coming. I would like to ask the Minister, first of all, if he could please explain to me the answer that I got from him that he and Cabinet had decided that the public did not deserve a report which had been promised by the previous Transportation Minister in 2011.

I have to ask him, what is the value of the promise of government and why did you decide the public did not deserve...

Everything done by the Department of Transportation does not address the fundamental underlying issue: the project did not proceed as planned. Where is the report which identifies and outlines the problems with the project, where it went off the rails and why?

Minister Ramsay committed to a full retrospective analysis of the bridge project, and that’s what I and the public expected. Now it’s just a distraction and not worth doing.

Examining past mistakes is invaluable to preventing the same thing from happening in the future. At the very least, Cabinet should be able to provide me and the public...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that consideration of Tabled Document 281-17(5), Northwest Territories Capital Estimates, 2016-2017, be now concluded and that Tabled Document 281-17(5) be reported and recommended as ready for further consideration in formal session through the form of an appropriation bill. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have to say to the Minister that the only lessons that were learned were from the review team project. I quote from their report: “The analysis was based on the experience of the delivery team, and many more parts that included political, financial and legal issues were not looked at.”

I have to ask the Minister, will he, once again, commit and fulfill the promise that was made by the previous Minister of Transportation and provide one report, a fully thorough and analyzed and retrospective analysis of the Deh Cho Bridge Project from inception to completion?

Thanks to the Minister. I didn’t suggest that… I think it was my statement that the public didn’t get what they deserved. It was a public commitment in the House to do a retrospective analysis and then there was a decision by the executive, by a Minister and I guess the rest of Cabinet, not to go through with this.

So my question is again, which I think the Minister chose to ignore, what is the value of promise by government?

The Minister mentioned a whole bunch of documents. I have a list here that is probably about six or so documents, but why should the public have to go searching all over...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, although I think Hilda is gone, but I did want to mention Hilda. She has been a stalwart person in Yellowknife for many years, beyond her work in the Assembly, so I wanted to recognize her work here and her commitment to the community.

I’d also like to recognize Ms. Elaine Taylor. We have had some meetings over the years. Also all the other representatives here from the Yukon. As Mr. Moses said, it’s great to have communication between Yukon and NWT, Whitehorse and Yellowknife. Welcome to everyone.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Over the summer months I had a disappointing e-mail exchange with the Minister of Transportation. For several years now I’ve been waiting for the government, the Department of Transportation, to produce and make publicly available a comprehensive, in-depth review and analysis of the Deh Cho Bridge Project. I have repeatedly asked about work done on such an analysis, and for years now I’ve been given excuses as to why it hasn’t yet happened.

Last month I finally got a straight answer, but it’s one which gives true meaning to the phrase “the government can’t be trusted...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We wish to deal with Tabled Document 324-17(5), Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 2, 2015-2016; and Tabled Document 325-17(5), Supplementary Estimates (Infrastructure Expenditures) No. 3, 2015-2016, and, Mr. Chair, we’d like to start with the capital estimates, which we did not conclude yesterday. Thank you.

I don’t believe I was suggesting that the bridge was not a good project. By the time the government took over the project, I believe it was extremely well managed and it has become an excellent piece of infrastructure. That’s not the issue. The issue is that the project started under a veil of suspicion and it continued under that veil of suspicion for quite some time.

There is no analysis, to my mind, that’s been done, looking at all the documents I got from the Minister. There’s nothing that looks at the project from its inception from the 15th Assembly when it was first discussed, from the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources. About I think three weeks ago now, ENR had put out a draft Conservation Plan and it was done in conjunction…

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