Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Back in mid-March, during the review of the Public Works and Services 2013-2014 Main Estimates, I asked many questions about the new downtown Yellowknife office building. The reason for these questions is that this $30 million project was being built over a number of business plans and it is important to understand the different costing schedules that taxpayers would be on the hook for. In fact, MLA Robert Hawkins also asked a number of questions regarding the terms and conditions and holdbacks of the project as well.
Following that session, there was a series of e-mails from my office of Range Lake to Minister Abernethy’s office asking for the right to review the construction contract for the building, the building schedules, amendments and, of course, the costs. What my office received from the Minister’s office was the following statement: “The Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act creates a mandatory exception to the public’s right to access information that could possibly harm the business interests of the contractors/businesses. This mandatory exception does not allow public bodies the discretion to disclose such information, such as “completed copy” of a contract without undertaking a required third-party consultation with a contractor or business, as required by the act. As such, completed copies of contracts will not be distributed. If you are interested in an individual contract, please let me know and we will seek third-party consultation to release the contract as required under the act.”
Sorry, I thought I was an elected official of this government, and the people of Range Lake have elected me to be a steward of the public purse and watch out for accountability and our government spending.
The plot thickens. My office received another statement from the Minister’s office and it said, “We have reviewed the act, and there is no exception that allows a public body to provide this information to an MLA without proceeding through the formal ATIPP application. As such, we are unable to provide copies of contracts without there being a formal ATIPP application on a specific contract. Should you have concerns about a specific contract, you can file an ATIPP application with the Department of Public Works and Services.”
Of course, I complied to the Minister’s request, and I had my office pay the fee for an ATIPP application with the Department of Public Works.
Well, on May 29, 2013, my office received a reply from the office of Public Works and Services and I was shocked to find the department wanted to charge me $1,477.75 to photocopy a whopping 1,992 pages of documents. All I can say is this is nothing more than a document dump and a ridiculous…
Mr. Dolynny, your time for your Member’s statement is concluded.
Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.
---Unanimous consent granted
…charge to ward off a Member of this government the right to get answers to simple questions and to protect the public purse.
Strangely enough, this is a recurrent theme that I as a Member see all too often when I assist constituents who want to gain access to information from this government. It almost appears that this government has a history of document dumping and fee shock to scare off would-be inquiries. This now appears to be the tactics used on an elected Member of this House.
I will be tabling, later today, my bill from the Department of Public Works and Services. Yes, I will have a few questions for the Minister later today. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. The honourable Member for Deh Cho, Mr. Nadli.
