Agreed.
Total department, not previously authorized, $977,000.
Agreed.
Thanks, committee. Page 12, Education, Culture and Employment, capital investment expenditures, not previously authorized, education and culture, not previously authorized, $11.496 million.
Agreed.
Advanced education, not previously authorized, $359,000.
Agreed.
Total department, not previously authorized, $11.855 million.
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. Page 13, Transportation, capital investment expenditures, not previously authorized, airports, $8.880 million.
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. Highways, not previously authorized, $62.342 million. Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you. I’d like to use this occasion to the $10 million, or am I just ahead of myself?
Mr. Hawkins, it is on this page. Carry on.
Thank you. I just wanted to make sure that I didn’t unreasonably hold up the $49 million, and I wanted to talk about the $10 million. I just wanted to make sure I was in the right spot. That’s all. Shall I proceed, Madam Chair?
Thanks very much. The Minister had offered full disclosure here in some manner, of course, and those are my words, not his exactly, but would the Minister give a detailed breakdown of the $10 million, how it’s being spent in this regard. I had spoken quite at length, so I don’t need to repeat all my questions. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Minister Miltenberger.
Madam Chair, we’d be happy to give the information. We can verbalize some of it here, but we also have the complete deck that was shared with committee, which we would be more than happy to make sure the Member, in fact, has a copy so he is conversant with all the issues. But I’ll ask, as well, Madam Chair, with your indulgence, for Mr. Neudorf to walk through some of the key areas of investment. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Mr. Neudorf.
Thank you, Madam Chair. The $10 million is the additional funding that’s required for the total project costs, so that we can change the terms of the contract, so that we can help ensure that we’ll meet a fall completion date. The additional funding is going to be used to accelerate the work that’s remaining to be completed on the bridge. The contractor will hire additional workers. He will be working 20 hours a day, and we could go longer than that, if required. The contractor is bringing additional equipment in order to get the bridge done, and additional project management help, as well, so that there is additional oversight. There is going to be a lot of moving parts on the bridge this summer, a lot of workers on the site, and we need to make sure that that is still going to happen in a safe manner and we still get good quality happening on the project. Thank you.
The detail of the briefing, actually, I should let the Minister know, I actually have a copy. I have actually gone through it and out of that stemmed many, many other questions, so no need to send one to the office. I already have one, so we can save the paper and save the time.
The detail of why they’re not meeting the existing deadline of the fall under the existing contract still needs to be cleared up. Thank you.
The key is the resources we’re putting on the table, as Mr. Neudorf indicated, they’re going to have two shifts working instead of one. They’re going to be working 20 hours a day as opposed to one shift with half the men. If you do the math, do the building schedule, then you can see that if we don’t concentrate those efforts then, yes, this will drag out until another building season and we will lose all the revenues and all the other… We’ll run ferries and winter roads for another year. That’s the key piece. Thank you.
The old Minister kept articulating that it would open in the fall of 2011, then he insisted it would be open in the fall of 2012 through the process. What particularly changed that we are unable to fulfill under the existing contract? It had a schedule of the previous year to be opened, and for some reason there clearly is slippage, as someone would use in the terminology here. What part of the slippage is our fault and what part of the slippage is their fault, and can we get some details as to what the slippage actually is? Because we did have a schedule on this previously; actually, a couple of times. Why is the contractor not responsible for the slippage in schedule?
The contractor in the contract is responsible. There has been, clearly, slippage. The reality we are faced with is the contractor was unable to conclude the work in the time that was predicted and agreed to. We are here today 90 percent complete, literally a few months from the end of this project to get it done. As has been committed to once the project is done, there will be the full review and debrief as to what happened so that we can learn all of the things we need to learn and going forward. Thank you.
Madam Chair, I do appreciate the Minister’s answer, but what I took from this last answer regarding the slippage and how it has fallen behind schedule, it sounds like it is the fault of the contractor. Are we not rewarding bad work or incomplete work? That is the question.
Madam Chair, the point is that this bridge is getting done. It is going to be one of the most impressive pieces of infrastructure we have in the North. I can tell you from my experience and now going on five years at the table with this project, that it is a very complex process with lots of moving parts.
We have been over all of the bumps in the road that we have had, and the hurdles we have had, and we have managed our way through them all. We’re going to do that in this case, as well, and point out how close we are to the finish line. We want to be cutting the ribbon here in November to have people using this.
There were differences. There were issues that came up throughout this process with former contractors, current contractors, other contractors. We have worked hard to adjust them all. We now have come forward with the final package and we think, given how close we are to the finish line, that will allow us to conclude that. That is our request here today. Thank you.
Madam Chair, the next issue, which is ironically the previous issue, was the Minister said there was slippage. He pointed to the contractor being responsible for not meeting the objectives of the schedule, which clearly is the issue here. What type of penalties or enforcement clauses on the slippage of the scheduling do we have? What can we invoke? Thank you.
Madam Chair, there was a fundamental decision to be made and we have made it. That decision is this: Do we tie ourselves in knots in the midst of a project, that we are working desperately to conclude, with lawyers and litigation and all these other issues, or do we rise above that and look at what the end goal is here and what is in the best interest of the people of the Northwest Territories, which is get the bridge built, limit the further costs and get it done within this current building season.
There will be plenty of time for review. There will be plenty of time later for finger pointing, for saying what didn’t happen, what should have happened, what might have happened, and if we do this in the future, what we will do differently and better.
At this point, it’s like being in the middle of a hockey game and you decide you are going to have a team scrum to figure out why things aren’t working when the game is going on, you’re going to lose. We can’t afford to do that. We have to keep our eye on the goal here, which is let’s get this bridge finished. It’s critical. Let’s not get involved in all of these issues of litigation and such when we’re in the middle of a construction project that is 90 percent complete. Thank you.
All right. Well, I’ll give the Minister an analogy back. We are buying a $10 million iceberg. We are buying it in the winter, parking it out and now it’s melted in July and someone says, let’s mop it up and see if we can account for our losses. Are you kidding me? It is going to melt away and no one is going to be around. We’re going to have an empty bucket because there is nothing left to soak up. To say that the fundamental decision was to go forward and basically pay $10 million, is the Minister saying to the House today, and I’m going to be frank, has the government, has this Cabinet decided to ignore the obligation Ruskin should be on the hook for and chosen to reward them with a $10 million contract so they will fulfill their original obligation?
Madam Chair, what we have done is been what we’ve focused on from the start, is to complete the bridge across the Mackenzie River. That project is 90 percent complete. It is not a $10 million issue. It is a $200 million issue. It is one that we have worked hard and we all look back and say yes, if we were doing this over, we definitely would have a different genesis. It would definitely have a different evolution as it went forward, but that is the benefit of hindsight.
So now here we are. We’re still involved in this issue. We are focused, as we have been from the start, on managing our way through this so that impressive piece of infrastructure is open for public use in November. Thank you.
Madam Chair, this is not about hindsight. We are actually at the deciding point. I am not sure the Minister wants to talk about the project as a broader issue. I agree with everything he said when he spoke to it as a broad issue, is recap, revisit, analyze, et cetera, but the issue of the $10 million is a $10 million decision today. The decision should come with some deciding points. The deciding points are based on the fundamentals as I had asked, which was, has the government consciously chosen to ignore Ruskin’s responsibilities to fulfill its contract. That is the question.
Madam Chair, let me throw out a couple more four-year-old analogies and sayings about being penny wise, possibly, and pound foolish or forgetting the forest for the trees.
In this case, we made a very conscious decision, one that had all sorts of factors and variables, but let’s talk to the money. Ten million dollars today as opposed to another $9 million probably by next year as you remobilize and get everything done and, as well, an outstanding another $10 million or so in possible claims that we would have spent months in litigation. We had claims. They had claims. We made the wise decision to overlook that particular part. Let’s move on to getting an agreement, which we have, to conclude this. These are the resources. These are the timelines we are aiming for, which is November. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Next on my list is Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to follow up. I didn’t hear a response to my question in general comments, so I thought I’d follow up here on the Inuvik-Tuk Highway Project. I believe we committed $2.5 million at the last minute in the 2011-12 just before year end. I think the goal was to seek out gravel resources and I have heard that they had low success there. What was the result of that work? Did all those dollars get expended? Were the objectives achieved? How does this money relate to that money and the results? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. Neudorf.
Madam Chair, when we came back to standing committee last winter, we indicated that we were seeking another $5 million total. The majority of that money is for geotechnical work, but a portion would also be to just continue with the rest of the project, the environmental assessment, getting it to them, more of the engineering and collecting the information for that. It was $2.5 million last fiscal year and this is the second half of that funding. The $2.5 million last year was spent completely on the geotechnical investigation. The on-site work was successful. They were able to get out onto the land and drill 300 bore holes and collect all of the material that they set out to collect. That material is now in the labs. It’s getting processed, analyzed. We are starting to see some of the results from that work and we’ll, over the next month or two, get the rest of the results. That’s obviously very important to us as we consider designing the road. We’ll need to know where the material is going to come from, and that, of course, will lead into better refinement on the cost estimate as well.
So we were successful. That means the bore holes were successful. How does that relate to the $2.5 million that we are now proposing again for this year? Was it $2.5 million or $3.5 million last year? We approved $2.5 million at the last minute. I thought maybe we’d had a million dollars already approved. Some clarity there. Thank you.
For the Inuvik-Tuk highway, in this fiscal year we have $3.5 million. One million was approved as part of the fall capital planning process and then a request for another $2.5 million in this supplementary appropriation. That $3.5 million will be used to carry on with the development of the project, the various aspects of it as we continue to plan for it. A significant portion will go to complete the geotechnical work. We are into the EA process, so a number of commitments were made as part of that EA process. We have to go and collect more water information and more other hydrological information, so money will be spent on that.
Some various vegetation, wildlife and terrain analysis required for EA and also required for our design are going to be collected. Then to move forward as part of the procurement process as well, we’ll be allocating some money for that. Thank you, Madam Chair.
So the earlier reports of the unsuccessful 300 bore holes were false, just to clarify?
I don’t think we’ve ever said that the investigation was unsuccessful. They did get out and collect all the material, drilled all the holes that they needed to do, so that was successful. We are starting to get the information back. In the preliminary information that we’re getting, I guess we were hoping that there would be better quality materials, so the results would show there was better quality of material available. We still need to wait to see all the detailed, final information to make final conclusions. Once we get that, we’ll assess what additional information we might need to collect so that we can have as good information on geotechnical as possible and that would then feed into the design and feed into the cost estimate for the work.
So the program was successful. Some of the geotechnical material that was sampled, perhaps it wasn’t as high quality as we were hoping, but it might mean that we have to go back and collect some more information so that we can have all those questions answered before we actually make some firmer commitments to the project.
If I can just try, in plain language, the project was primarily defined as gravel of the nature you needed for the project and you were disappointed in the results. Is that right as far as that goes? Thank you.
We’re pleased with how the program went. I guess we’re hoping that we find some better quality material. It just means that we’ll have to keep looking until we find the material in the appropriate quality and in the appropriate location to move the project forward. Thank you.
I’ll just rephrase that. The guys worked hard and well. They drilled 300 great bore holes, but we are disappointed they didn’t find the gravel they were looking for. If I’m correct, the next step is to find the gravel or to go somewhere else for it. Three hundred sounds like a lot to be disappointed with. Would we start looking elsewhere, like further afield, or is there some anticipation that we can drill another 300 and find it in the same area?
We are still waiting for all the final geotechnical information to come in. So discussion about being disappointed or unsure of the quality, we do need to get to the final information to make those assessments. We are starting to consider the options of where we would go to drill additional holes. It will be beyond where we were to drill these 300 holes. There are other known areas that were there. We did need to obtain permits to get out onto the land and drill those holes. I think if we would have had some flexibility on those permits, we would have modified the program that was in place to collect more of that information, but the permits didn’t allow us to do that, so we’ll have to take a step back and go back to the studies, the reports that are available, determine where else we will go and look and design an appropriate program this summer.
That’s exactly the sort of concerns we had when we raised the issues in discussing this, it was being rushed. It was a rushed job. The deputy minister has confirmed that, so we have thrown $2.5 million out there. I’m sure the truth is somewhere in between there.
I guess I’d like to know from the Minister that we’re not going to continue with that sort of approach. We have so many important priorities. We want to do this project, but we want to do it at the appropriate scale and pace to make sure that the dollars are being spent well. I’m looking for that assurance from the Minister. The proof is in the pudding. We didn’t get it last time. What can we do to be sure we get it this time? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Miltenberger.
Thank you, Madam Chair. We do intend and we are going to do this work and we’re going to continue to do the work in the proper way. As the deputy indicated, the licence had some restriction factors in it. We found out where things aren’t; now we have to find out where things are.
In terms of the money that is now before this House, it will allow us, once again, enough of the information that committee and the MLAs were asking for and that we need to make an informed decision about this project, about potential costs and are all the resources there in terms of granular resources and such. I’ll ask Mr. Neudorf if he wants to add anything further, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Mr. Neudorf.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d just add that we believe, once we get the final reports, that we did find enough quantity of material that would allow us to construct the road. There is enough material there to do the subgrade, so that was great information for us. We do have to go back now and make sure we have quality material that would allow us to do the finishing surfacing of the road. Thank you.
