Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Minister of Transportation and I’d like to thank both the Minister of Transportation and Finance for the package of information on the Deh Cho Bridge that we received the other day. It was comprehensive and there was a lot of information in there, which Members have been asking for.
I spoke about the bridge last week and in my statement I asked for two things. I asked for an analysis of the costs, how they were accumulated from inception until now, and I also asked for protocols for the future. My first question to the Minister is in regard to the bridge project’s estimates and the costs to date information that was contained in the package of information we got the other day. I didn’t see any obvious reference in either of those two items to what I called “hidden costs” in my statement, and by that I mean the work that’s been done by GNWT staff, the Department of Transportation, Department of Justice, Department of Finance. So I’d like to ask the Minister where do those costs show up in this summary that we received the other day. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The honourable Minister responsible for Transportation, Mr. Michael McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The costs that were incurred by our government that were not directly charged back to the project I’m assuming is what the Member is referring to. Those are one full-time position and another part-time position and, of course, there are other people within our government that have worked on this project. Those costs are not included, as the Member stated, as part of this budget. Those costs are outside of the project costs. These are all calculations that would be charged back to the project and we don’t charge back our staff positions to the project at this point. So it won’t be included as part of the estimations.
Thank you. That goes to my point, when I call them “hidden costs” I was not impugning that anyone was hiding anything, but these are costs which are not all that easy to itemize. The two PYs, yes, they’re obvious, but then there are many other bits and pieces of costs in various departments and that’s what I’m talking about. I’d like to know if the Minister can tell me approximately what kinds of costs the GNWT is incurring for staff time that’s been spent on this project, and that would be from after October 2007 election until now. Thank you.
Thank you. I suppose we could calculate that. That’s not something we normally do on our project is divide a person’s time up into how many projects he’s got and assign a cost to those specific projects. This is a normal course of duty. We can certainly try to get some calculations together. It would entail some effort. We have a lot of people that may have worked on one portion or another on this project, but we can certainly have a discussion to see if we can get that together in a fairly short order, if that’s what’s being requested. Thank you.
Thanks to the Minister. I do appreciate the commitment. That is what I’m asking for, is some kind of an approximation of costs which GNWT has had to endure for this project over and above the actual costs of the construction and the management of the project. So I am looking forward to that information.
My next question has to do with chargeback and the Minister has mentioned that many costs are charged to the project. These GNWT staff costs I presume are not charged to the project and I’d like him to confirm. I understood that the $15 million we just approved is going to be paid back to GNWT through tolls. Will these GNWT staff costs also be paid back to GNWT through tolls over time? Thank you.
We don’t have any projects that we charge back government services. The people that are working on these projects are hired to do those jobs and, no, they’re not included in the toll recovery. The $15 million does not include the two positions or the position and a half and things of that nature that are right now part of regular duties. So I guess the short answer to the Member is no, it’s not included in the $15 million. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Your final supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thanks, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister for that clarification. So I guess I have to then ask, this is a P3 project, you know, the cost for the project is now $181-some-million, but is it normal that in a P3 project that the public partner is going to encounter and endure and have to undertake extra costs over and above the actual cost of the project? Thank you.
There’s a P3 arrangement in this case and, yes, there are responsibilities assigned to different partners. In this case, we did charge back a lot of what the government has to have incurred, including all the different components of responsibility, but the two people that we have assigned are a position and a half that we have assigned directly to this position. We have not included and we did not agree anywhere in the concession agreement that we would charge it back. That’s the rationale for why we’re doing it the way we are. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
