Mr. Speaker, I wanted to ask questions on SFA today, but I guess I’ll just have to ask questions on the Deh Cho Bridge instead.
Mr. Speaker, lots of e-mails have been coming into my e-mail box, and I want to sincerely thank people for taking the time to share their opinions and their questions on this very significant piece of capital infrastructure. I encourage that. Whether it is pro or against, I am very interested in hearing people’s input. I also want to thank people who phoned in this morning and took the trouble to become involved through a phone-in radio show on CBC.
Mr. Speaker, yesterday in the House, when the Premier was asked about putting together a projection of what it would cost to terminate the agreement to proceed with the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation, he indicated that FMBS would embark on that exercise, and this material may be available within a couple of days. Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the Premier if he would take the next step in that process by sharing that estimation with the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation and allowing them to respond as to whether or not they would consider that to be a reasonable determination of costs to exit.
Mr. Speaker, the question asked of them, as I responded the other day, was work we could do for our membership. I am sure, even when the question was asked, that the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation’s interest is in looking at what liabilities they may be at risk for.
Mr. Speaker, I believe the agreement with the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation does provide for what they call a value for termination on an occasional, from time-to-time, basis.
I would like to ask the Premier: has such a valuation for termination ever been contemplated by this government or shared with the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation in order to assess what it would cost our government to terminate this project?
Mr. Speaker, we have not looked at it from a 16th Assembly point of view. In response to the Member the other day, I did commit that we would look at what that potential may be.
I would like to ask the Premier if he would share that valuation that the FMB comes up with, with the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation as a next step, to see if they would like to respond to that dollar value.
Mr. Speaker, in a sense there are a number of partners involved in this. We are back stoppers, in a sense, as was pointed out by Members of this Assembly, on this project. Information that we would do, we would share with all parties involved. They haven’t requested this, and I can’t see why we would go to them for their evaluation of our work.
From the FMBS side, we have been monitoring the fiscal impacts of this project and ensuring that we’ve covered off areas of risk points for the G.N.W.T.
The Premier certainly has the opportunity available to him to pose that question to the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation after FMBS puts that work together.
Moving on to just a slightly different kind of accountability exercise related to the Deh Cho Bridge, I’d like to ask the Premier if he is aware of the exercise that is referred to as a peer review. There was previously a bridge that was under design and contemplation in British Columbia. It was the $1 billion Golden Ears Bridge. It was in B.C. At one point there was a call for a peer review of the financial circumstances surrounding this project. At the end of the review the entire business model was ordered changed.
Is the Premier familiar with the concept of a peer review of the financial circumstances surrounding this project?
Mr. Speaker, peer reviews are done on a whole number of initiatives. In fact, as we're doing our work in preparing for the business plan, looking at our fiscal situation, deputy ministers would be sitting down together to review each other’s options that they may be working on. We’ve seen that in a number of initiatives throughout.
For ourselves, though, a peer review on the financial side, when you look at it, is a review of the work that's done. There has been a cost-benefit analysis that is public. Yes, when you look at it, the numbers have changed since the price has gone up.
But if we take a Territorial viewpoint here, we would never be able to afford half the communities that are in the Northwest Territories if we stuck to an absolute business model as to what the costs are and the cost-benefit analysis and so on.
I’m not sure what we’d want to do with that area. The information that we're working around has been public.
