Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yesterday in the House I asked the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment about the status of the contract for the Inuvik school. He informed us that the contract had been awarded. Later in the Committee of the Whole we found out that the awarding of the contract was only really a letter of intent to the contractor with details yet to be worked out. We were told that the letter of intent does not bind this government to the project as planned or designed.
The binding agreement will be in the form of a signed contract. Mr. Speaker, we have a shortage of capital dollars. Projects that communities are in dire need of have been pushed back or completely disappeared, so it is incumbent on this government to make the most financially prudent decisions possible when it comes to our capital infrastructure budget. It is also incumbent on our government to distribute and share these limited dollars in the fairest way possible throughout our territory in all sizes of communities.
For that reason departments must be able to defend decisions made for the rationale for the priority placed on certain projects and for the amount that we are prepared to pay to acquire these projects. To our duty for accountable and transparent government it is our job as Regular Members to ask questions about contracting processes and decisions.
Just because a contract is negotiated, in my opinion, is not sufficient to deem the details to be confidential until after the contract is signed. Because we know that after the contract is signed, Mr. Speaker, it is a little too late for us to do anything about this. Of course, it brings back memories of the Deh Cho Bridge project, where Members were not allowed to have details of that agreement, either, because of the third party interest in that project. Now here we are again, being told that the details of a negotiated contract are also protected by confidentiality until the letter or the contract is signed.
Mr. Speaker, I will be seeking a few things yet in regard to this project in terms of information. I will just put it out there as notice that I would be very interested to see a chronology of all events related to this project. I would like to request a copy of the letters of support for the negotiated contract from the various parties, but I don’t know to what date they go back.
Also, I think it would be good to get an analysis on the cost of this school in relation to other schools on a per square foot basis, with all the necessary adjustments for its size, economies of scale and those various things. Those are the kinds of things I’ll be seeking on this project. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Member for Kam Lake, Mr. Ramsay.
