Mr. Speaker, I want to pick up where my colleague Mrs. Groenewegen left in questioning the Premier on the Deh Cho Bridge project.
Now I want to talk about process, if I could. I want to go back to something the Premier said the last time we met in November, and that was that he was going to commit to a review of the process that allowed the Government of the Northwest Territories to sign a concession agreement committing it to a $160 million project three days prior to the Territorial election. As we know, during a transition period, when governments are in transition and there’s an election ongoing, governments are not supposed to do anything substantial and commit funds. They did, three days prior to the election.
I’d like to ask the Premier where exactly is that process, and how is he going to involve Regular Members of this House in that process so that this type of thing never happens again?
Mr. Speaker, one simple way of doing it is never to enact another piece of legislation that drives one particular project. That is an avenue, so that would always come before Members of the House. But like every act we’ve put in place, that act, once passed, becomes a living document of the Assembly, and Assemblies to come, until it’s removed from the books.
The review that I committed to…. We will have it done very soon, and I’ll be able to share that with Members and sit down with them at that point.
I would like to thank the Premier for that. I would like to ask the Premier about the review that he’s undertaking. Who is involved in that review? I wonder if the Audit Bureau is involved in that type of review, or is it the Premier’s Office that’s doing that review? Who are the players that are involved in trying to come up with recommendations on that process?
Mr. Speaker, the process starts off within the Executive and working with the appropriate departments to get the information, and at that point deciding where we proceed and what avenues we go through.
Mr. Speaker, it sounds to me that it’s a review of the process to review the process, so we’re actually going to think about how to do things so that we can try to do something. Maybe I’m a little bit mistaken in that analysis, but I’d like to again ask the Premier: who is going to do the review of the process, and when are we going to get some information on that work that’s been done? I just don’t want a high-level analysis done by the Department of Executive. I want something substantial, and I think the Audit Bureau should be involved.
Mr. Speaker, when I talked about looking at the process, I was looking at the project timelines, information that flowed between particular departments to committees, to this Assembly — whether it was through supplementary process — and decisions made right to the point of the concession agreement being signed.
Mr. Speaker, for the record, we have to state that but for the fact that this concession agreement was signed as late as it was, it is politically one that is being debated. The fact is that the numbers being used today were shared with Members of the past Assembly prior to that concession agreement being signed.
Mr. Speaker, the Premier talks about numbers being provided to Members of the last government. That brings me to my next question. Where is the detailed, updated cost-benefit analysis of the project, which Members have never seen? We saw one five years ago when the project was $60 million, but the government has yet to provide this House with a detailed, updated cost-benefit analysis. Where is that?
Mr. Speaker, I did receive a letter from the committee regarding this project. They requested a number of pieces of information, and we are very close to having that all together and providing it to the committee. We’ll have that before this session is done.
