Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ll continue on with these questions. This is obviously, for all intents and purposes, a government project now. We’ve taken it on lock, stock, and barrel by the looks of things. I’d like to ask the Minister, when he talks about contracts that are outstanding, what are we waiting to sign? Are we signing this project management team up to a contract? If that contract hasn’t been signed when is it going to be signed and who is it going to be signed with? I think this is a public government and we’re talking about public funds. The Minister should be able to stand up and tell us who exactly that is.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Minister responsible for Transportation, Mr. Michael McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Absolutely. I agree with the Member 100 percent. Let’s be real here, though. We have a supp that we are bringing forward in the next couple of days and we will have to answer those questions. This is getting ahead of the game. We haven’t formally been in a position to put that in front of Members. We are discussing, I guess, the terms now, but there are a number of things that we need to sign, and we will sign once we know that we have an arrangement and we have the approval of this House. I’m sure the Members are not going to be very satisfied or very happy with me if I sign a contract for so many millions of dollars that locks us in while I don’t have the authority to spend the money. So first things first. Those things will be brought forward and we plan to have that information ready and inform the House of the different players that are involved. We haven’t formalized any agreements 100 percent, we haven’t signed off with the contractor, so there are a number of things that we are still working on and we made that clear. We still have to work out the transition agreements with the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation, for example. The supplementary appropriation for $15 million has not reached the floor of this House yet. We can commit to providing that, we intend to provide that, and that will come.
I’d like to ask the Minister, with all these things outstanding, how can the Minister with any certainty be sure that $15 million is enough to cover all the bases on this project?
The discussions are concluded, the signing off has not been done, and I’m quite reluctant to throw the names and company titles out into the public until we have that kind of discussion in house. We have looked at this project from every angle. We have had people that are outside of our government, outside of the bridge project itself look at our numbers. We are confident that we’ve captured all the different costs or pieces that are out there in terms of what it’s going to take to conclude this project. We’ve looked at the claims, we’ve looked at the interest, we’ve looked at everything that needs to be paid out before we move forward. It’s all captured in the $15 million that we will be bringing forward in terms of a supp. Is it 100 percent foolproof? Of course not. We don’t know and won’t know until we look back as we move forward, I guess.
I appreciate the Minister’s response. I guess the last question I’d have is whether or not the Minister understands that, as I said earlier, for a government project which -- let’s not fool ourselves; it has become a government project -- it’s unprecedented for work of this nature on a project like this in this country of Canada to be sole sourced, that this is completely unprecedented, Mr. Speaker, the way this project is moving forward. Unprecedented. Thank you.
Maybe I have to remind the Member this is not the only project that we’ve sole sourced. The school in Inuvik is sole source also.
Mr. Speaker, this project started off as a public process with a tendering portion that was built into it. It has led into a number of changes and we certainly have heard in this House the challenges that have concerned the Members. We’ve made every effort, I want to assure the Members, Mr. Speaker, that I’ve taken the opportunity to meet with our staff, with the Bridge Corporation, with everybody that I could to see if we could influence the project moving forward smoothly and the transition being able to happen without any extra costs. I was very confident that we were going to be able to achieve that as we looked at changing the design. Of course, it was of great concern to myself and to my Cabinet colleagues and I’m sure to the Members of this House, that we weren’t able to do that.
We have come in now with a project that’s 10 percent over budget, and that’s something we’ll have to debate and have approval from the Members of these Chambers to get the go-ahead. Failing that, we won’t be able to conclude this project. We would be in a very difficult situation. But I’m very reluctant to sign off on a contract until we have that discussion. Thank you.
