Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ll be speaking again, like some of my colleagues have on the Deh Cho Bridge. Earlier today we heard from the Minister himself who said it’s not going to cost us more money. I guess I’m really questioning why we’re really here. It is costing us more money. We’ve heard that there’s going to be a supplemental coming and I think the people of the Northwest Territories are feeling this new ask feels more like a ransom than the completion of a project, and I think the people are sick of it. Really what we have here is a new negotiated deal with a negotiated price with an agreement-in-principle icing coating. I’m going to ask the Minister right here: I’m a little bit confused in the legality of what is really binding moving forward, so can the Minister indicate to me which deal this government is bound to at this moment in time?
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. The honourable Minister responsible for Transportation, Mr. David Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’re bound to getting this project completed by November. We’re bound to protecting the public purse. We’ve negotiated a settlement to all the outstanding claims. That’s what we’re bound to. We’re trying to move forward. There’s no sense in fighting with the contractor. We need to move forward and put our differences behind us and get the project complete by November. That’s what we’re bound to.
I’m not sure if the word is legally binding or legally bound. It’s a bit confusing. The reason I’m asking that first question is that legally binding, when we first negotiated this price with Ruskin, there was obviously holdbacks involved. These are legal parts of large-scale projects. Anyone who builds houses or any type of infrastructure knows that. What’s happening now with these holdbacks? Are these being leveraged, and if not, why not?
When the contract was originally done with Ruskin – that again predates my time here as Minister of Transportation – there are holdbacks on the construction in that contract and I believe that is industry standard at about 5 percent. That is the current practice and that will continue to be the practice.
I think we’re going down the rabbit hole somewhere but really, quite frankly, we don’t know whether something is legally bound or binding, we don’t know whether these holdbacks are going to be applied to the so-called debt, so I’m going to ask my third question to this which is: What does it take to terminate a contract or contractor if they’re not fulfilling their negotiated price that they signed with ink with the GNWT?
I’m not a lawyer and that’s a hypothetical question.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I sense some written questions coming down the pipeline. I appreciate my last opportunity to ask some questions. You heard from this side of the House, you heard will the bleeding stop? Can you assure us, we heard responses, expectation it will be open, we can complete it, and always there could be circumstances. I’m going to make this a very simple question to the Minister. Can the Minister guarantee to the people of the Northwest Territories that this will be the final supplement asked by this government to complete the Deh Cho Bridge?
I could never guarantee that. What I can guarantee is we’re doing our utmost to ensure that that bridge is completed in November, that we’re protecting the public purse and we’re moving this forward and we’re not looking back.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
