Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement today, I talked about the need for what one could call an independent audit on the Deh Cho Bridge and certainly the process. We definitely need an independent audit that has teeth. Of course, as many of us will remember, there seemed to be always questions about internal information being released at a weird time, and certainly rumours about people calling the lender and harassing them about the incompetence of both government and the bridge management. That didn’t play well on to the government when we were saddled with the $200 million end cost, which really could have paralyzed this government.
I will focus my questions to the Minister of Transportation, certainly the new Minister of Transportation, new on the file. Would he be willing to launch an independent audit on the Deh Cho Bridge Project as soon as possible? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Minister of Transportation, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. At this time the department is moving forward with a retrospective evaluation of the bridge and carrying out the work. We’re also doing an analysis of what we have found and monitoring as we do some additional work to repair anything that could be an issue on the bridge. At this time the department feels that carrying out this type of work, doing the monitoring, retrospective evaluation of the work and so on, would be more valuable than doing another audit. Thank you.
It was my understanding that the former Minister promised this and other people have been promising that we will have an independent audit. Quite frankly, if the Department of Transportation is monitoring themselves, we might as well just surrender to the results already because it does seem somewhat biased. I’m not trying to be mean here today, but self-evaluation really only works well when you’re, I guess, meditating.
I ask once again for the taxpayer, for the people in the Northwest Territories, would the Minister look at launching an independent audit that had teeth so we could truly understand who helped cause so many problems in this Deh Cho Bridge process and so we can get to the bottom of this and solve this problem, not only looking back but also looking forward? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, as the Member may be aware, the Auditor General has looked at the bridge, and the mid-project performance review was completed by the Auditor General. All of the recommendations that were put in by the Auditor General were carried out by the department. As I indicated, information I have at this time, all indications are that there is not an issue and that anything that we are picking up during the monitoring and the usability of the bridge and everything, if there are issues, the department is carrying out corrective measures. Right now we are thinking that an evaluation of what is happening with the bridge and how the bridge was done, looking at what happened during the midlife audit are all things that we’re incorporating and don’t really feel that we should commit to calling another audit of the bridge at this time. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, the Auditor General looked at a certain area. The Levelton Report looked at a certain area, but it never looked at investigating on who worked to derail the project, who released information, who harassed the lender, of that type. Those are the things the taxpayers deserve answers to. We have 200 million reasons to ask ourselves, did someone try to scuttle this project from day one. That’s the question I am after, not one of those things. The Department of Transportation looking at themselves I highly doubt that they will look at themselves under that type of scrutiny.
My question once again is: Would the Minister be willing to look at an independent audit now that I have cited all of those concerns that we need to get to the bottom of? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, the Deh Cho Bridge meets and exceeds all of Canada’s national bridge codes when it was constructed and completed. The department doesn’t see an issue with the bridge. If there certainly are issues that we are unaware of, then I would welcome getting that information. If we were to receive information indicating that there are certain problems, if we were to receive information that there may have been some wrongdoings during the construction or dealings with the construction of the bridge, we will certainly look at that. If that means bringing in an auditor to look at that, we would do that. We would like to do the right thing. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.
Mr. Speaker, I think I’ve highlighted some of the reasons and I’m happy to repeat them again. I said that because the lender pulled the loan and the GNWT became saddled with it, I think we should be investigating exactly why that happened, what led up to that and what information caused such destruction and angst for them to do that.
What more information is the Minister looking at or need to look at in order to say, wait a minute, something happened here, we almost paralyzed the government with this situation. As such, once again I ask the Minister, would he be willing to launch an audit to look at this situation. We have the date, the time, the place and we know all the players in this situation. What’s stopping him?
Mr. Speaker, as far as the loan goes and how the lender had pulled the loan from the…(inaudible)…is something that the department has looked at. At the time this had occurred, this decision was made; however, I don’t have the details of specifically what had occurred, what had occurred in the inner workings of the loan and so on. I am prepared to gather that information to start with. I can look at that information and determine if I do see that there was an issue wrong with it, then I will share it with Members across the floor. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
