Debates of May 17, 2007 (day 9)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

WHEREAS the Deh Cho Bridge project is no longer expected to be self-financing and will require ongoing investment by the Government of the Northwest Territories;

AND WHEREAS the Government of Canada has not committed to infrastructure funding for the Deh Cho Bridge project;

AND WHEREAS the potential impacts of the Deh Cho Bridge on the cost of living for Yellowknife, the Tlicho communities and the Akaitcho communities are unclear;

AND WHEREAS the exact cost of financing the Deh Cho Bridge to the Government of the Northwest Territories has not been provided to Regular Members;

NOW THEREFORE I MOVE, seconded by the honourable Member for Sahtu, that this Legislative Assembly strongly recommends the government not enter into a binding agreement committing it to the Deh Cho Bridge project until it has provided Regular Members with:

an up-to-date analysis of the expected cost of living impacts of the bridge on Yellowknife, the Tlicho communities and the Akaitcho communities;

the estimated social impacts and economic benefits for the community of Fort Providence; and

the exact total cost of the Deh Cho Bridge to the Government of the Northwest Territories;

and given Regular Members an opportunity to comment on whether the bridge should proceed based on this information.

Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Motion is on the floor. Motion is in order. To the motion. Honourable Member for Kam Lake, Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you, colleagues. This is an issue that has garnered much discussion amongst Members of this House over the past week and a half since we've been back in the House, Mr. Speaker, and I want to be clear, and state again for the record, that in no way am I opposed to a bridge across the Mackenzie River at Fort Providence. That's not the onus of this motion. The onus of this motion, Mr. Speaker, is the fact that the project has changed. It has changed tremendously. It has gone from a self-financing model five years ago to one that will now need an additional at least $2 million more in government funds on a yearly basis to proceed.

This motion is about transparency, Mr. Speaker. It's about accountability; it's about moving things forward by working together, and I do have some concerns on how exactly the bridge project jumped the queue for priorities of the government. It's interesting how that happens when we've never had a debate in this House in the four years I've been here on what are the big infrastructure priorities here. We've never had the debate. There are so many competing interests out there, like the Mackenzie Valley highway, chipsealing of Highway No. 5, the road to gravel source 177 near Tuk, the extension of Highway No. 4 to Gordon Lake, the Tuk-Inuvik highway. There are a number of competing priorities out there. There are a number of competing priorities out there, Mr. Speaker. Why the urgency to move this forward right now?

Mr. Speaker, I'll be clear on this: All along, in the three and a half years, that loan guarantee to the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation has been increased four or five times. Every time the government would come back to Regular Members saying we've got to get some federal money to get this bridge to go ahead, there has to be federal money. So, Mr. Speaker, it was very surprising when the Premier announced in his sessional statement that the bridge was going to go ahead.

Very strange.

It was odd and it left a lot of questions unanswered. Mr. Speaker, I can appreciate, I really do appreciate the fact that the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation is in negotiations. Those numbers, those details are secret right now. But what this motion does, Mr. Speaker, is it asks the government, before they enter into any agreement that's going to bind the next government and every government for 35 years after that to spending public funds, it should come back here, it should show us what the potential impact is on the cost of living in Yellowknife, the Tlicho communities and the Akaitcho communities; it should also show us what the total cost is going to be of this bridge.

Mr. Speaker, we've never had a debate and that's the sad reality of this. This government, the 15th Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories, has never had a debate about a Deh Cho Bridge, not since I've been here. Hopefully this motion today will get out there, it will allow Members to stand up to talk about the Deh Cho Bridge, and that's a good thing, Mr. Speaker. We're here, these are public funds, we need to have some accountability, it needs to be as transparent a transaction as it possibly can be.

I would encourage Members to support this motion. Again, it doesn't say don't build the bridge. It says when you're done negotiations, come back to us. Let us see what we are getting ourselves into. I don't think that's too much to ask, Mr. Speaker. So with that, I'll close with these opening comments. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. To the motion. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, am going to support this motion here, as Mr. Ramsay has indicated, in terms of having some transparency in this government in terms of having some discussion. I, too, see the benefits of the Deh Cho Bridge being built across the Mackenzie River, as I also have aspirations for a Great Bear River bridge being built across our land, and other bridges that need to be built down the Mackenzie Valley here.

Mr. Speaker, I, too, was quite amazed how this project received quite a lot of attention in the last couple of weeks. I know we have gotten some other briefings in some other rooms on this project here, and the reason for this is it's all of a sudden we're deciding to build it. Well, we in the smaller communities are asking for special initiatives to be built in our regions such as other programs we could list off, but, Mr. Speaker, that's not the point here. The point is that we want some open, transparent discussions on mega projects. This is not just Fort Providence or areas around Yellowknife. This is a Northwest Territories project. When you look at projects down the Mackenzie Valley, in the Gwich'in or the Beaufort-Delta or the Sahtu, we seem to have that, well, it's a territorial project, we have to have some discussion. This one is a P3 project that's being negotiated with the community of Fort Providence under the corporate act that gives them some legal authority, legal powers, to work on this. But it's a Northwest Territories project, also. Mr. Speaker, the things I'd like to look at is if you change the physical landscape of the Mackenzie River, you know you change the people, you change the way of life, and this bridge here will certainly do that to the people in Fort Providence who are on ground zero. What are some of the things we could look out for them in terms of if this is a project that is being built in one of our small communities, are we preparing ourselves for this community, because it's at ground zero, for lots of social impacts, for the economic benefits that would come off this project? It's just like any other projects I have witnessed in our region. There are good impacts and then there are also some negative impacts in the region. So that's the thing I wanted to ask this government here in terms of how are we preparing the people and the way of life. I mean there are things in there that said they have the environmental and the water licence approved, but the way of life for the people on the river here. So those things I want to look at, Mr. Speaker.

One of the things that I heard from the Members here is in terms of the break-up of the Mackenzie River and how it puts some hardships onto some of the people outside the area that use the ferry, such as the city of Yellowknife and Providence and some of the Tlicho communities, even the areas around the Nahendeh. Our communities in the Sahtu are isolated pretty well, in terms of that type of transportation, for about eight months. We just don't seem to have a priority to have them catch up to the other regions in terms of this type of infrastructure. There's lots of things we could do, so I'm very surprised as to how this project got bumped right up without any type of secure commitment from the federal government and we're going to pay one way or another.