Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister of Transportation will certainly be the lucky recipient of my questions this afternoon, and I’m sure he’ll be quite pleased to have them. My questions will be focused around, of course, the $32 million claim being submitted by the contractor.
As we understand it, we don’t know what the outcome of that is, so to be clear, I don’t think a decision has been made to spend money or not. But I think it’s important to stress this and build a good foundation on the issue of the Inuvik-Tuktoyaktuk Highway. I need to be clear, there is no question about the importance of that infrastructure to Northerners. In its very own way, of course, it’s nation building, and I have no doubt that the residents of that community will benefit from this and certainly the fact that it will lower the cost of living. It will be a beautiful highway, I have no doubt. Maybe not beautiful enough to drive a rented Audi A8 down, but it is certainly a beautiful highway in and of itself.
My question for the Minister of Transportation is: How does he plan to keep Members informed once the review of this potential claim has been submitted? Members want to know the next direction that will be taken long before any decision is made. How does the Minister plan to keep the Members informed? And this really affects whether there is an election or not.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The Minister of Transportation, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In the committee meeting of Priorities and Planning yesterday in the House, I committed to providing regular weekly updates on this potential claim to the committee. Thank you.
I’m sure I don’t need to remind the Minister that we only have basically a week of committee meetings left and the Assembly, of course, is done on October 8th from a sitting point of view and Members are still active, in theory of course, until I think it’s the stroke of midnight on Sunday the 25th.
But decisions are being made behind the scenes and I think the issue really comes down to what assurances can the Minister provide the House publicly that no decision, if there is a situation where there may be a need for extra money, that no decision will be made in absence of the Members having an opportunity to discuss the merits of this initiative and certainly debate them and, if need be, support them if necessary.
What assurances is the Minister going to provide this House that true accountability can happen?
The Member is correct. Of course, the writ will be dropping within probably the next four weeks or so. So, I guess we will ensure that the Members are advised, if it has to be in writing, advised up until the point the writ is dropped. At that point we have 30 days or 28 days of campaigning period. During that time, if there is a need for a decision, we’re hoping that there would be no need for a decision during the campaign period, but we would govern according to the contract that we have with the company.
The last thing we want to do is stop the project or delay the project. They’re already operating with reduced days because of the weather. So, I guess the best case scenario is we make our decisions prior to the election and any other decisions that need to be made will be made after the election.
Can the Minister clearly say to this House that no decision will be made if the case need be to advance money on this project, that no decision will be made if Members are not around in any normal form or fashion to be able to participate in a meaningful discussion, debate and decision?
If there is some decision, I just don’t know how it’s going to happen and I’d hate to see a Deh Cho Bridge déjà vu all over again.
So, is the Minister going to say to the House clearly that no decision will be made in absence of the Members being able to fully participate in the decision?
There may be a decision made prior to the writ dropping, to continue the operations, to continue the construction of the Inuvik-Tuk Highway. There will be no decision made after the writ is dropped until after the election of the 18th Assembly. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. From my last question, it’s certainly seen as it can be an obstruction of the freedoms and rights of a Member to do their job if we are not able to participate fundamentally in a meaningful way on decisions of this magnitude. We’re not talking about a $100 decision here; we’re talking about a $32 million decision.
So, how does the Minister expect that we will be meaningfully involved in some type of decision between October 8th and October 25th prior to the election starting, because everybody knows October 8th is the last sitting day. So if they do not have any decision on what to do on this project, whether to give money or not to give money, we’re not going to be involved and we cannot allow that to happen. Thank you.
One of the reasons that we’re going through the claim process is to determine what the claim would be. Currently we know, one thing we do know is that the majority of the potential claims would be in the future. It’s something that would be looked at as year three and year four construction winds down. So, what we’ve done is we’ve divided the potential claim. There is actually no claim yet, but the potential claim has been divided in two. It’s $12 million for the construction to date. That’s what we’re engaging in now. The $20 million potential claim is for the coming construction.
What’s happening now is the project company is indicating that there is potential. If the weather is similar to what the weather has been in the last two years, there’s potential for a claim on the last two years of construction for $20 million. But what we’re looking at currently and what we’re meeting with the project company today on is the $12 million that has become an issue for them to date. So, the construction to date. That is not yet a claim and may not be a claim if we’re able to work with the company to get the construction going and using the money that’s approved in this House to continue construction. They mainly need to start construction and that’s what we are hoping to do now.
After October 8th, I’m hoping that there is no requirement for a decision, but nothing is going to happen in the $232 million, that’s for sure. We’re hoping that we can have a decision on the $12 million before the 8th. If we don’t, we’re hoping to have a decision before the 26th when the writ will drop. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Member for Deh Cho, Mr. Nadli.
