Robert Hawkins

The Minister of Transportation.

Mr. Speaker, I’ll respect that, because his letter, that I’m not allowed to quote and which will be tabled later, will help clarify that question officially.

So my last question for the Minister is around the context of what if this Northern firm isn’t hypothetically the one we’re negotiating with, although everyone knows it’s not the group we’re negotiating with. What’s to assure us that some undue process wasn’t happening here, and is the Minister prepared to reimburse that Northern company that spent all that time trying to build a proposal that was actually unofficially awarded already?

Well, Mr. Speaker, that was the best answer I’ve heard all day from this Minister on this project. I’m really glad to hear that maybe he’s coming around to wanting to actually discuss this.

So, Mr. Speaker, the fact is that I want to make absolutely clear, even to the Member on this side of the House for Mackenzie Delta, that I’m not against the project in any way; it’s the process, Mr. Speaker.

I still have concerns that the process is not fair, because I would be surprised that anyone applying through this RFP process was made aware that “By the way, one of your competitors actually wrote all...

Mr. Speaker, we seem to continue to dance around the fact that when you write a letter and you say, “We regret to inform you, you didn’t get it,” that leaves us one option: the other group. Unless you’re cancelling the whole project, maybe….

Or maybe that’s the issue: the Minister has decided to sole-source it to an Abbotsford, B.C., company. Maybe that’s the problem. I’ve been asking the wrong question.

Are you sole-sourcing this project to the Abbotsford, B.C., company, without giving the Northern company — the one that’s done these types of jobs for years — a chance to do the job where they...

Mr. Speaker, the Minister keeps pretending that a contract isn’t being awarded — or isn’t in the process of being awarded — to this Abbotsford company. The fact is, it’s in the process of being done.

Let’s put semantics away and say, “Look, just because the t’s haven’t been crossed and the i’s haven’t been dotted, the fact is, it is going to this,” because it’s not going to the Northern firm, which could do this project.

Could the Minister explain to this House, or assure this House — and, certainly, demonstrate to this House — how this Abbotsford, B.C., company didn’t play a special role to...

Mr. Speaker, at least now we're on the same page on this whole issue. We're talking about the group that the Minister doesn't want to talk about.

To further clarify, I'd like the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs to agree to go back and look at the situation, because the southern contractor from Abbotsford, B.C., did a fair bit of work on these water treatment plants — and the potential proposal that came forward, that they bid on — and they are in negotiations right now and receiving…. Would he go back and review this file to make sure that everything was on the up-and-up, that they...

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I’ll thank the Member from Thebacha for bringing forward the concern. If he felt there was an issue, I appreciate him bringing it and highlighting it as an issue.

Mr. Speaker, before I begin, I have to cite a book called Beauchesne’s, which this Assembly is very familiar with. It talks about tone and intent. I’m bringing forward the tone and intent and concerns of my constituents who sent family members to that community.

Mr. Speaker, on page 28 of yesterday’s Hansard I explicitly qualified my comments by stating that there was no mal-intention intended with respect to...

I would like to see the ruling first, Mr. Speaker, if that’s in order in this particular case.

Mr. Speaker, in my Member’s statement today I spoke of the Thebacha Campus in Fort Smith and the fact that we may not be meeting all the needs of our Northern students. It really is a question of safety and effectiveness. We cannot have a 67 per cent drop in our trades program without that raising a warning flag.

I’ll go a little further and say that we had a Social Worker program offered in that community. For two years in a row it had little or no attendance. It had to be cancelled and was moved to Yellowknife. There it was picked up, and it’s being subscribed to quite fully.

My question...

Mr. Chairman, I move that $500,000 be deleted from the Interim Appropriation Detail booklet amount set out in Schedule 2, Capital Investment Expenditures, item No. 4, Health and Social Services, page 6, for the project Health Care Centre, Fort Smith.

Interjections.