Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to rise today to continue to speak about the Deh Cho Bridge and the fact that our contract is not being implemented as it was written out.
Back in 2010 the government heralded the new opportunity because of the situation that they had to work through the failed partnership with ATCON and they developed a new one with Ruskin directly. They negotiated a revised cost for this superstructure to complete the project, but at the time it was seen as the path forward.
Mr. Speaker, I’d like to remind Members of the Honourable Michael McLeod’s comments in January 2010 in the House, which was, “the project is on track for completion by November 2011,” and of course he also highlights that’s one year later than originally planned. Well, at that time there was a fixed contract in place so we could proceed toward the completion of the Deh Cho Bridge.
I rise because of the fact that I’m concerned that the contract is not being fulfilled and I wonder to myself if this is an issue of why even bother having contracts if we’re not going to ensure that they’re fulfilled. There are always dispute mechanisms and problems about every major construction project. That’s considered normal business. People have disagreements and there are problems and processes, but it just seems as if as soon as our folks ask them to do a little more work, work a little harder, complete by the agreed deadline, all of a sudden now we have to pay them more money because they dispute and dislike our direction.
Again, what’s the point of having a contract if we can’t fulfill it? It’s funny, because I look at comments made by the former Member Dave Ramsay, now Minister of course, when he talks about the darker days are still before us and I think some days he may be clairvoyant, because another up to $10 million is referring to potentially darker days.
The fact is, we had a fixed price, why are we not fulfilling that. That’s the obligation being asked today, is the fact that we don’t have any clarification what the real problems are and why we’re not fulfilling or implementing those. That’s the discussion that’s being avoided.
What we have here is the Minister coming forward saying, as he said yesterday, he wants another $7.2 million to $9.5 million up to potentially $10 million to fulfill this contract and that he hopes it will open this fall. That’s essentially the problem. What is the money really for? Why aren’t we fighting for a contract that we had signed and a partnership made in good faith?
I will have questions later today on this particular subject to get the facts of the contract.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Blake.
