Good afternoon, colleagues. Welcome back to the Chamber. Before we begin today, I would like to draw your attention to the Canadian flags that are on your desk marking National Flag of Canada Day. February 15th was declared National Flag of Canada Day in 1996. It marks the day in 1965 when our red and white maple leaf flag was first raised over Parliament Hill in Ottawa and, indeed, hundreds of communities across Canada.
The red and white maple leaf flag has become a powerful and predominant symbol of Canada. It is recognized all over the world as the flag of the people who cherish the ideals of democracy, freedom, justice, diversity and equality. It is a particularly fitting day to celebrate our flag and this beautiful country in which we live. It is also fitting to see so many red maple leafs welcoming the world to the 2010 Winter Olympics. The maple leaf is even more predominant now that Canada has won its first Olympic gold medal on Canadian soil.
---Applause
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, reducing our consumption, reusing materials and recycling waste products are ways that we can all help reduce our impact on the environment. When we do this, we use fewer natural resources and less energy, which reduces greenhouse gas emissions and saves money.
Given the opportunity, NWT residents willingly reduce consumption and participate in recycling programs. This is evident in our highly successful Beverage Container Program, with over 100 million
containers returned to date. While we have had some successes, residents are looking to the Government of the Northwest Territories to play a leadership role in expanding this popular program.
In 2008, ENR consulted NWT residents, aboriginal organizations, environmental organizations and government to prioritize products for inclusion in the Waste Reduction and Recovery Program. Items under review included paper products, milk containers, e-waste, lead acid batteries, plastic grocery bags, fuel drums and tires. Residents identified paper and cardboard as the number one waste item for recovery or recycling. Recommendations also included the addition of milk containers as the next logical step for recycling in the NWT. Concerns about the number of plastic bags around communities, on the land, and going into our landfills were also received.
Mr. Speaker, it is a known fact that paper-based materials make up the largest portion of the waste stream. Some communities collect paper-based materials for shipment to southern Canada for recycling. However, current methods of transportation are energy-intensive and expensive; decreasing the environmental and economic benefits of recycling when these bulky materials are shipped long distances.
As a result, ENR continues to look for ways to reuse or recycle waste paper and cardboard right here in the North. A three-year initiative providing financial assistance to NWT-based municipalities, organizations, businesses and individuals to initiate and develop alternate ways to reuse paper and cardboard destined for landfills began last spring. This is the second year that financial assistance is being made available for the development of innovative, alternative and progressive methods of recycling paper products.
Through our Single-use Retail Bag Program that began on January 15, 2010, NWT grocery stores now charge a 25 cent environmental fee for every paper and/or plastic bag that they distribute. This environmental fee will help reduce our use of these products and extend the life of our community landfills. This initiative is part of a larger, two-year plan to phase out all paper and plastic bags in the NWT, eliminating an estimated nine million single-use retail bags from our landfills each and every year.
Mr. Speaker, I’m pleased to announce that beginning today, milk containers are included as part of the NWT Beverage Container Program. All milk and liquid milk products, including milk jugs and milk substitute cartons, yogurt drink bottles, condensed and evaporated milk cans, UHT boxes and creamer bottles will be accepted at all NWT bottle depots. Residents will receive a 25 cent return on clean and rinsed milk containers of two or more litres and a 10 cent return on milk containers of one litre or less. The addition of milk containers in the Beverage Container Program will further reduce the volume of waste that goes to landfills and litter in our communities.
Money raised through the Beverage Container Program and the Bag Fee Program goes into the Environment Fund. This fund is used to cover program expenses and improve waste reduction and recovery programs, including our planned expansion into e-waste.
Mr. Speaker, it is clear that waste reduction and recycling is important to the people of the Northwest Territories. Expanding the Waste Reduction and Recovery Program will maintain and improve the quality of our environment as well as significantly extend the lives of local landfills. Mahsi cho.
The honourable Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
Mr. Speaker, the Department of Education, Culture and Employment is pleased to share news about the Aboriginal Student Achievement Initiative that we implemented to increase aboriginal students’ success across the Northwest Territories.
The department is working with superintendents, teachers and other departments and aboriginal organizations on a plan to close the gap in aboriginal student achievement. This school term we began work to increase student attendance because aboriginal students have a high rate of absenteeism overall. By the time they reach Grade 10, the average aboriginal student misses the equivalent of two years of school. We are supporting pilot projects in every school division in the Northwest Territories to address the need to increase student attendance.
An example of one of these projects is in Colville Lake school where students who attend school regularly and those with perfect attendance, participate in special activities like pizza and movie nights and computer nights in the school. There has been a marked improvement in the number of students with perfect attendance. Parents are making a more concerted effort to send their children to school in Colville Lake.
Another attendance project is in the K’alemi Dene School where staff initiated the Creative Trails Program to encourage students to attend school, to build relationships with the students and to increase knowledge and develop skills in northern arts and crafts. Every Wednesday after school, community elders, community artisans and teachers provide instruction to the students. The students continue with the projects on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. A lot of learning, laughter and relationship building is happening. Students have participated in doing Dene beading and are learning moose hair tufting, quilling, working with furs and making moccasins.
In addition to attendance projects, department staff are working with the Northwest Territories Teachers’ Association and superintendents of divisional education councils to develop a culturally appropriate orientation for all new and beginning teachers. This will assist both teachers and parents to bridge the communication gap between home and school.
To get the message out in the community, we’ve launched a public advertising campaign. Communications materials talk about the importance of regularly attending school and explain the education system. To include youth in the campaign, the department has teamed up with CKLB Radio to have students in the community schools act as community reporters for CKLB Radio. Later this month, Mr. Speaker, we hope to have our youths’ voices hitting the airwaves sharing stories from communities across our Territory.
Mr. Speaker, the longer term goal of the Aboriginal Student Achievement Working Group is to develop and implement a territorial plan to help eliminate the achievement gap between aboriginal and non-aboriginal students.
I am pleased to let you know the department is meeting with its aboriginal student achievement partners on February 23rd to 24th in Yellowknife to do further work on the territorial plan on aboriginal education. The Aboriginal Student Achievement Working Group will submit a plan to me by April this year.
Mr. Speaker, this year we are diligently working to ensure we see healthy successful aboriginal students, with informed and involved parents and community education partners. I will keep the Members informed of the progress of the Aboriginal Student Achievement Initiative. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Krutko. The honourable Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I’m going to speak about housing problems in Nahendeh. I have to tell you that I get no joy in finding that I have been right about the dire straits of housing in my constituency.
The 2009 NWT Community Survey of Housing confirms that the number of households in the NWT that are considered to be in core need has increased from 16 percent in 2004 to 19 percent in 2009. Core need refers to households with incomes before the core need income and whose housing costs are more than 30 percent of the household income or housing without running water and indoor plumbing or housing in major need of repairs.
While 19 percent of the households in the NWT are in core need, Nahendeh tops all the regions at the highest rate with a full 36 percent of dwellings in core need. The sad reality is that every region has seen a downward spiral in adequate housing but Nahendeh has experienced the worst.
I have spoken in the House many times about housing; how timelines for completion of repairs in Nahanni Butte and other locations have not been met, how there was a case where an elder had to wait more than a year before moving back into his home, and how families have been forced to move in with relatives, leading to overcrowding. We know that students who live in adequate housing are successful at school. We know that proper housing supports better health, which leads to reduced costs to our health care system.
I call on the NWT Housing Corporation to plan for and make sure work projects in communities are properly planned, scheduled, and completed. I also call on the GNWT to turn this trend of deteriorating housing around and make it a goal that the next core needs survey is a positive one.
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. The honourable Member for Kam Lake, Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I’d like to continue trying to make some sense of the mess that is the Deh Cho Bridge Project. It was interesting to hear the Transportation Minister state in a media interview on Friday with CBC that finally the government admits in some fashion that it went ahead with the project despite a cost-benefit analysis that clearly indicated that the government could expect a $53 million negative benefit from the bridge at $165 million. Throw in at least another $15 million and you have a project that will have a negative cost to this government and Territory of $70 million. Not to mention that we are spending this nearly $200 million on a bridge that will undoubtedly increase the cost of living in Yellowknife, Ndilo, Dettah, the Tlicho communities, and every other community serviced by air from Yellowknife.
There are many more questions about this project that have to be asked. Right now the project is almost half done. Up until this week or late last week the Minister and government gave us every assurance that the new design would save money and be less expensive to construct.
During a briefing last week I just about fell off my chair when the Minister said they’re negotiating the deal with what amounts to be one company. Mr. Speaker, I don’t understand for one second why we would not go to tender on the remaining work. Does the Minister not understand that the contractor we’re negotiating with has the government squarely over a barrel? Does the Minister and government not owe it to the people of the Northwest Territories and Members of this House to get the best price that they possibly can for the remainder of this work?
Mr. Speaker, our pants are on the ground and we sure look like a bunch of fools, that’s for sure. Haven’t we been taken advantage of enough, Mr. Speaker? Mr. Speaker, we are being asked to approve $15 million more for this project when there’s not been a full accounting of where the dollars have gone, where and how much is charged and to who, and exactly where is the design in all of this. How can you negotiate a sole-source deal without a firm design? If we sign a deal without the completion of this design, aren’t we just setting ourselves up to potential changes and cost overruns? Mr. Speaker, I’ll have questions for the Minister of Transportation at the appropriate time. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as we listened to the large amount of media coverage this morning on the Deh Cho Bridge on CBC Radio this morning, Mr. Ramsay was in for an interview, we heard the Minister’s comments in the media scrum after the House session on Friday, and I’ve been struggling and thinking, you know, what can we do to bring some more, I guess, transparency and accountability to this whole issue of the Deh Cho Bridge.
As my husband and I listened to the news this morning, Rick, who’s not known to be the politician in the family, suggested, he said, isn’t this the first time you’ve actually had to vote money on this project, and I said, yeah, it is. Since we passed that Deh Cho Bridge Corporation Act in the 14th Assembly, this is the first time that we’ve actually been called upon to vote on money related to this bridge project in the form of what will be a supplementary appropriation request for $15 million to address the cost overruns because of the many changes. He said this is the opportunity, this is your chance to get the government to provide very precise and accurate accounting about some of the things we’ve wondered about for a long time. When we agreed to the loan guarantees -- and that’s what they were, they were not expenditures, they were guarantees at the time for getting this project planning done and underway -- each time when we would try to inquire about where the money was being expended, for what went up to be loan guarantees in the neighbourhood of $9 million, we were always told, of course, that the money was being spent by the proponent, which was the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation, not by our government. So the normal level of financial reporting was not there out of respect for the proprietors who are the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation.
So here as we, Mr. Speaker, have an opportunity coming up where, in fact, we do have to vote money to cover these overruns, I think it would be really good for the government to get very busy trying to account to us how much has been spent on this project. I’m particularly interested in the workers within the Department of Transportation themselves, how much of their time, energy and effort has gone to work on this particular file. So that’s what I will be seeking. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Member for Tu Nedhe, Mr. Beaulieu.
Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, areas near Lutselk'e and Fort Resolution are under constant pressure, various pressures from industry to extract non-renewable resources from the land. Mr. Speaker, I realize the responsibility for monitoring the land and water from an environmental perspective lies with the federal government; however, Mr. Speaker, the communities feel that our government should take some responsibility to ensure that the land and water is protected from environment degradation.
Currently, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources has responsibility for wildlife and forestry. It would be an easy fit for the department to post environmental officers in the communities of Lutselk'e and Fort Resolution and by having those officers work with renewable resource officers currently in place in those communities.
Mr. Speaker, I am not talking about environmental protection officers. They respond to things like fuel spills. These positions are valuable too. However, the communities need officers that will check the changes in the water and changes on the land as early as resource exploration is taking place.
Mr. Speaker, I stood up in this House in the past and spoke about how we can increase employment rates in small communities and how little presence the GNWT, our government, has in the rural and remote communities. Mr. Speaker, these communities have people that are very competent in these areas and by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources creating these positions, they will have a presence in the very key area of non-renewable resource development.
Currently, Mr. Speaker, the communities and our government rely on the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Board to ensure work like environmental assessments and environmental impact statements and reviewing any type of development reports are completed. The creation of these positions will allow the communities to be closer linked with any non-renewable resource development or potential resource development being contemplated on their land and water. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to talk today about the state of the educational facilities in my riding. Mr. Speaker, as all people in Yellowknife will know, J.H. Sissons and Mildred Hall are two gems of our education system in the riding of Yellowknife Centre.
Mr. Speaker, in 1975, J.H. Sissons was constructed. That was really the last time a hammer ever found itself into that school. Mr. Speaker, it has not been renovated on the capital plan by this government since then. Yes, it has received a new boiler, which just allows more efficient heat to roll out those leaking windows, and occasionally it has had some fresh paint. Mr. Speaker, ultimately you can’t hide the fact that this place needs to be updated with a little bit of fresh paint.
Mr. Speaker, J.H. Sissons is the priority of the school’s board wanting it to be updated in the short term. Mr. Speaker, if it cannot get a full renovation like other projects can, why don’t we take the approach that they want some gymnasium upgrades and certainly carpet upgrades, because this school board understands that certain schools need priority listings and J.H. Sissons needs to be on that list. It wasn’t that long ago when it was on the list but it has been bumped off. Mr. Speaker, you have to keep in mind that school boards need to make sure that the schools are healthy, safe and modern. It is difficult to attract students to schools that look aged.
Mr. Speaker, a few years ago, Mildred Hall was fortunate enough to get some updates in 2005, but 2005 presented itself as a facelift, not a full renovation as the department will try to tell you. It did some paint, some great structural work up front of the building of Mildred Hall, but, Mr. Speaker, completely forgot about some of the important things such as some of the roofing structure, the windows and many of the walls have not been touched since the original construction back in 1965.
Mr. Speaker, the students there at Mildred Hall use their two little auditoriums to do all their gymnasium programs. They have been asking for some time to have a real gymnasium expanded, which is just not like what any other school really deserves. I think all schools in the Northwest Territories deserve a good quality gymnasium. You can only take your gym sports out so often. It is just completely unfair.
Mr. Speaker, in closing, I want to stress that J.H. Sissons is certainly a gem because it draws out the French-speaking community and an education for them as well as Mildred Hall represents diversity of its finest. These two schools need the support from this government. I look forward to question period hearing the Minister support that. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Member for Nunakput, Mr. Jacobson.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Inuvialuit Regional Corporation and myself are proud to acknowledge and congratulate the large contingent of Inuvialuit participation at the Vancouver 2010 Olympics. Through the Government of the Northwest Territories, there are 16 Inuvialuit participating in a blanket toss, traditional Inuit games, performing arts, individual arts: Mr. Abel Tingmiak, Hans Lennie, Donald Kuptana, Kyle Kuptana, Noel Leigh Cockney, Kristin Green, Marion Toutuk Green, Vanessa Anikina, Mathew Anikina, James Williams, Karis Gruben, Dwayne Illasiak, Leanne Goose, Greg Nasogaluak and Mary Okheena and Elizabeth Drescher.
Through the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the National Inuit Organization, the Aklavik Drummers and Dancers as well will participate at Inuit Across the North in a showcase celebrating the people behind the Inukshuk on Inuit Day, February 20, 2010, at the Aboriginal Pavilian. The group will be performing on NWT Day, February 19, as part of the NWT Cultural Delegation at B.C. Place. Twelve participants from Aklavik -- Carol Arey, Mary Gordon, Dean Arey, Mary Ruth Meyook, Phillip Elanik, Lori Elanik, Pamela Gordon, Colin Gordon, Alexander Gordon, Thomas Gordon, Eva Gordon, and Andrew Gordon, Sr. -- will also be all at the pavilion.
Most impressive is the two-year effort of the Inuvik Drummers and Dancers who were able to raise funds to bring more than 30 of their members to perform at the Vancouver Olympics. Although not part of the official Inuit Cultural Delegation, the group will appear at several venues through the Talking Stick Festival, at appearances in the Northern House. The participants are: Brian Rogers, William Allen, Kevin Allen, Vanessa Kasook, Patrick Gruben, Ethel Gruben, Dang-Dang Gruben, Olivia Lennie, Jimmy Kalinek, Justin Collinson, Jayda Sittichinli, Blair Rogers, Robin Carpenter, Alainna Carpenter, Keenan Carpenter, Priscilla Smith, Miranda Pingo, Lorna Delanie Elias, Sarah Tingmiak, Lillian Elias, Annie Aleekuk, Shae-Lynie Allen, Billy Lennie, Alecia Lennie, Cheryl Rogers, Patricia Rogers, Kendra Elanik, and Wendy Smith.
I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.
---Unanimous consent granted.
I won’t go after that last section. During the opening ceremonies, four Inuvialuit youth participated as part of the Indigenous Youth Gathering: Margaret Noksana, Sophie Steffure, Joshua Teddy, and Chad Larocque. Working through the territorial government and ITK, Peggy Jay and Mavis Jacobson are championing the Inuvialuit crafters and carpenters with a variety of products for sale at the Northern House and the Aboriginal Village in and downtown Vancouver, and the Visions of the North on February 23 to 28 at the Richmond O-Zone Live Site. Joining the three Inuvialuit visual artists are Joe Nasogaluak, Bessie Inuktalik, and Ryan Taylor.
Finally, a big thank you to all those who supported the IRC in all the Inuvialuit communities. Please join me in acknowledging the Inuvialuit participation which will enhance the Northwest Territories presence at the Vancouver Olympics.
Thank you, Mr. Jacobson. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The press release on the Deh Cho Bridge last Friday capped off a depressing few days for me. I can’t say I was too surprised to learn that the bridge project is now officially over budget. Projects the size of this one often encounter delays and cost overruns, so an additional $15 million was not unexpected.
No, the depressing part for me was confirmation of my nagging doubts about the viability of the bridge project and realization that the concerns I’ve harboured about it since I began work in this Assembly two years ago were validated. I’m especially frustrated because I, Members of this Assembly, and the residents of the NWT inherited the Deh Cho Bridge Project without input. I came in after the fact, a concession agreement having been signed three days before the 2007 elections, a project management team set in place prior to the same election, financial guarantees agreed to long before I came into this job.
I’ve never felt comfortable with the process used to establish this project. It certainly was not open and transparent. The government placed a huge trust in a third-party organization and along with that trust willingly set up itself and the residents of the NWT as the financial backstop for a very expensive project.
I consider myself an optimist. It’s my nature to think the best of people and things. I had high hopes for the bridge project and its management that things would work out, that given time the corporation would prove itself competent and in doing so bring the project to completion successfully. Now my hopes are dashed. I feel like some unseen hand has stuck me with a raw deal. I feel like I’ve been backed into a corner and left with no options for a way out.
The extra project costs will impact the government’s financial bottom line and we can potentially end up with responsibility for the bridge loan. But it is by no means the end of the world. With the government now more in control of the project we can minimize future risks and hopefully further costs. However, I, like some of my colleagues, fully expect we’ve not seen the last of cost overruns for this project.
Of paramount importance for this Assembly now is to ensure two things happen:
One, there must be an audit of the whole bridge affair. From inception to today we have to determine and document how things were set in place; what decisions were made, when, and by whom; what actions were taken, when, and by whom; and we must tally all the costs that have been incurred, including in-kind costs which are the result of work done by GNWT staff, the many, many hidden person hours spent on this project.
I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.
---Unanimous consent granted.
Two, this Assembly must set in place protocols to guide Executive Council actions that will inhibit major decisions being made in the months preceding an election. We have to shut the door on the opportunity for an Executive Council in the waning days of an Assembly to enter into any major agreement such as the one signed off with the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation.
We the 16th Assembly have been saddled with the travesty that is the Deh Cho Bridge, but it must never be allowed to happen this way again.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, would like to make comments on the recent 2009 Community Housing Needs Survey. Last week we finished with the Minister of the corporation in terms of the budget. When I left and went upstairs, I received a phone call from a distraught senior in Fort Good Hope. She’s a retired social worker, she’s a senior, and she was looking for help with the Housing Corporation. She had to go through the whole bureaucratic administrative process and the application and the whole information gathering. She rushed to get all this information together so she could get the application into the office to receive assistance. She said when she got back from one of the communities, she opened a letter from the Housing Corporation and was just devastated because of the rejection by the Housing Corporation.
This senior here has a busted water tank, the pipes were all frozen, her grandchildren have to take showers and baths outside of her house, they have to use a honey bucket, they have to borrow a water tank to put it through the house. She said she gives a lot of her good work to the government and this is how they’re treating her.
In the 2009 survey the Sahtu region is at about 41 percent followed by Nahendeh at 32 percent, in the department of adequacy, which is about the physical conditions of places to live in a house with basic facilities to provide a safe and healthy place to live, such as running water, hot water, using the washroom, serious defects in the structure of the house. This lady here was really devastated, because she asked how she could get help. She’s worked with the Housing Corporation, she’s been a government employee, she’s retired, she just wants to live comfortably. This type of weather is cold and this type of application takes 10 to 12 weeks to get approval and be processed.
I’m going to ask the Minister how to administer the program so that people like this can receive assistance right away under emergency care or seniors care so she doesn’t have to live like this anymore.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ve got some more questions today for the Minister of Transportation. It goes back to my Member’s statement talking about the Deh Cho Bridge Project. Obviously the government’s coming back looking for another $15 million because of the increased costs on the second half of the project, the superstructure, as it’s called. I’d like to ask the Minister today why exactly the government, who is project manager now, is negotiating with one company. Why hasn’t this gone out to tender, given the cost of this superstructure? Why are we negotiating with one company?
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Minister responsible for Transportation, Mr. Michael McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Member has been pretty clear on his feelings on this project and he’s even taken a page out of what’s happened in the New Brunswick government not too long ago about the pants on the ground statement. I’m glad he didn’t try to sing it.
Mr. Speaker, it’s pretty obvious why we are negotiating with one company. We have very limited time to make this project work and if we had gone to a competitive process, of course, we would be adding to the construction period. We’d have to prepare the tender documents and all the related material that’s required to go to a public process, and that probably would have added another year to the construction period and also to the bottom line of what this bridge is going to cost. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, the industry folks I’ve talked to say that it’s unprecedented in this country for a project of this size to be negotiated with one company. In fact, I know our time is limited but, Mr. Speaker, it would appear to me that the other thing that’s unlimited is our ability to spend money.
Mr. Speaker, I think we’ve spent enough on this project. I think the Minister and this government should duly and rightfully go to the marketplace and get the best price for the remainder of the work on the Deh Cho Bridge Project. I don’t care if it takes six months. I don’t care if it takes a year. If it’s $10 million or $12 million less than the price that they’re, so called, negotiating with this one company, I think the people of the Northwest Territories deserve better than just going to negotiate with one company, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, obviously, I disagree with the Member. I know he doesn’t care about how long it would take. We would have to translate that into what it would cost, added cost to what’s already built in to this supp that we have yet to bring forward. We would expect a good portion of what the $15 million ask is, is already interest and cost of delaying the project. We would have to add that amount to another year of delay and that would be quite significant, Mr. Speaker, over and above the $15 million. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, obviously the government hasn’t learned much. It negotiated a contract with ATCON, allowed the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation to negotiate a contract with ATCON, and we all know where that’s gotten us. I want to ask the Minister, who ultimately calls the shot on whether this project would go to tender and which project team is doing this. Is it the former Deh Cho Bridge Corporation project management team or is it our project management team, Mr. Speaker? Because I’d like to know that.
Mr. Speaker, the project is being developed and moved forward under my watch. I assumed the responsibility for this file a year and a half ago. I take full responsibility for anything’s that’s transpired during that period. We are calling the shots. We’ve moved into a project management position. We have new people and a new team put in place. Also, we have negotiated a new contract along with a redesign. So, Mr. Speaker, we have turned that corner and we are anticipating some good results as we move forward. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Your final supplementary, Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I disagree with the Minister on this. I really think that, like I said, we owe it to the public, we owe it to the Members of this House. The project is in such a mess that I think we’ve got to look for a win where we can get it. I think we could have gotten a win, given the current economic climate in western Canada and getting other companies out there to bid on this project, so I disagree with the Minister on that.
I’d like to finally ask the Minister, what is he negotiating this contract with this one company on when, you know, I haven’t heard that the design work has concluded. So I’d like to know exactly what he’s negotiating and with what design. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you. I apologize to the Member if he hadn’t heard that we have concluded the design. We’ve said it on a number of occasions and we’ll say it again: The superstructure has been concluded. There is still some electrical work and toll collection portion along with the catwalk that has to be finalized. We expect that will be another two weeks. There’s enough there to move forward for shop drawings and a negotiated contract with the company.
Mr. Speaker, I have to state that we’ve taken every avenue to make information public. The Member is quite aware that I have made every effort to ensure that Members had whatever documents I had to share so that they could be involved with this project. Mr. Speaker, I don’t pretend that the project has not had its share of problems.
When I assumed this department, this file a year and a half ago, I made a judgment that I needed to provide whatever support I could to make it work, and that’s what we’re doing now. There are still challenges, but we still feel this is a project that can be concluded in the next couple years. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
