Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'd like to follow up on questions raised by the Member for Yellowknife North on the Stanton renewal project.
The auditor general maintains that the leasing -- the decision to lease the Legacy Building, it's not good value for money. Plain English. It's in excess of $70 million that wasn't part of the initial project to a building we own. Does the Minister agree with the auditor general, and can she tell us today that this was not good value for money as a decision? Thank you.
Thank you, Member for Range Lake. Minister of Infrastructure.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the auditor general, as I understand, was -- is looking at the two projects as one and our view continues to be that the two projects are not one. And so the way that we are looking at that value analysis continues to differ, Mr. Speaker. And we do now have a campus-based approach with health care with the two facilities operating side-by-side rather than a Stanton Territorial Hospital and what would have then been a separate building built somewhere else at some distance. So at this point, Mr. Speaker, we have two operating facilities and, again, looking at them as the two separate projects, it is our view that they are, indeed, a good value for money. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I guess I'm confused. This seems to be new information. Was there ever a plan that Liwego'ati would not be used or that Stanton Legacy would not be used as part of a health care campus? My understanding is there was always a component of that in the initial RFP that went out for the rebuild was to demo this building for other uses and that was -- so was there some other purpose intended for Stanton Legacy before it became the Liwego'ati Building? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, when the decision was made to lease it out and to have it remediated by that leaseholder, the intention was that the leaseholder could make whatever choices initially that they wanted about what they would do with that building. Likely office space, commercial, commercial space, but not bound necessarily to turn it back into any kind of health facility. That would, of course, require the health department to be planning to go back in there and initially that was not the plan. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister of Infrastructure. Final supplementary. Member from Range Lake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I know for a fact that the clause or the arrangement with the P3 partner is very specific that the GNWT gets final say about what goes in there. We had jokes about, you know, it not being allowed to be a casino, for example. So the GNWT had a say over it. They could have made it clear that it needs to be health. But I'll say this: Can the Minister produce any evidence that this is actually saving money -- that this -- at the time, it is saving money competitively from leases? We've heard as much as 30 percent savings but there's no dollar figure. Can she produce a receipt? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, so there's the P3 partner who operates the Stanton Territorial Hospital and then there is a separate arrangement, commercial arrangement, with a leaseholder over the Liwego'ati Building. Again, two different entities that we are speaking about. And what I certainly can look again back to, and I believe was committed at the time, is that some further evidence can be provided, some further information can be provided with respect to the cost differentials. So specifically on the Liwego'ati Building, at that time it would have been -- at the time that the decision was made to lease back the room and the spaces that were being remediated, given the revenue sharing agreement that was in place, it was better value for dollar than to go out then and build a new building for the long-term care facility.
Mr. Speaker, there's -- again, we acknowledge that records back from 2014 and 2015 are not as complete as they should be, that that recordkeeping and that decision-making wasn't as good as it -- in terms of records, wasn't as good as it should be, and that is the situation we find ourselves in now. Not going to do that going forward, and we have a lot better checks and balances in place. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister of Infrastructure. Oral questions. Member from Yellowknife Centre.
