Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Transportation. I would like to follow up on my Member’s statement and ask some questions about the Deh Cho Bridge review, which is apparently not now coming. I would like to ask the Minister, first of all, if he could please explain to me the answer that I got from him that he and Cabinet had decided that the public did not deserve a report which had been promised by the previous Transportation Minister in 2011.
I have to ask him, what is the value of the promise of government and why did you decide the public did not deserve the analysis that was promised? Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister of Transportation, Mr. Beaulieu.
Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. I don’t believe I said that the community or the public did not deserve a retrospective analysis. I indicated that we had done some work with the Auditor General in looking at the bridge at the point when we took the bridge over from another project authority and changed the contractor. We also had a report done by independent people, the Levelton Report that was done from the time the bridge started until we took over the bridge, and DOT had done a couple of reports on lessons learned. I felt that that was sufficient for us to move forward using that bridge as lessons learned on other major projects that would be undertaken. It isn’t a matter of whether or not people deserved something; it was something we felt we could work with the information we had to move forward. Thank you.
Thanks to the Minister. I didn’t suggest that… I think it was my statement that the public didn’t get what they deserved. It was a public commitment in the House to do a retrospective analysis and then there was a decision by the executive, by a Minister and I guess the rest of Cabinet, not to go through with this.
So my question is again, which I think the Minister chose to ignore, what is the value of promise by government?
The Minister mentioned a whole bunch of documents. I have a list here that is probably about six or so documents, but why should the public have to go searching all over the website, all over the GNWT public site looking for documents to find out why this project didn’t proceed as planned? I would like to ask the Minister, in that particular instance, where is it – I know there is no spot – that the public can go to get a fully inclusive retrospective analysis of the Deh Cho Bridge Project. I don’t believe it’s there. There is no one report which covers everything and I want to ask the Minister why that is not there. Thank you.
We do have that information on our DOT website. We felt that individuals who wish to determine what the issues were could find that information in a lot of different places. We looked at a retrospective analysis as a tool for ourselves when we move forward. It appeared that the main issues that people in the House felt that there was something wrong with the Deh Cho Bridge. What we were saying is the issue was that the contractor changed midstream, that the project authority changed in midstream. That is what seemed to be the issue.
As far as the department goes, we felt we did a very good job. We put a project in that is very valuable to this city, valuable to the people of the Northwest Territories. It makes travel a lot easier and we felt it was a very good piece of infrastructure. It appears as though individuals are indicating that that may not be such a good piece of infrastructure. We put information together from lessons learned so we could do a better job on other projects, but it wasn’t something that would be there for the individuals to see and say exactly what happened.
Everything that happened with the Deh Cho Bridge was very public. There is more information, and if individuals want specific to what they are saying what they see as an issue, they can make that request. Members can make that request and we’ll comply. Thank you.
I don’t believe I was suggesting that the bridge was not a good project. By the time the government took over the project, I believe it was extremely well managed and it has become an excellent piece of infrastructure. That’s not the issue. The issue is that the project started under a veil of suspicion and it continued under that veil of suspicion for quite some time.
There is no analysis, to my mind, that’s been done, looking at all the documents I got from the Minister. There’s nothing that looks at the project from its inception from the 15th Assembly when it was first discussed, from the transition from the 15th to the 16th when the contract was signed and then on into the 16th until the government took it over. There is nothing which I can go to or direct the public to go where they can see what sorts of things happened and what went wrong.
I would like to ask the Minister, there were lessons to be learned, absolutely. The lessons that were learned by the department were from a review team and specific to the building of the bridge. I don’t have a problem with that. My problem is what lessons were learned from the very inception of the bridge project. Thank you.
I don’t know specifically which lessons were learned from the very inception of the Deh Cho Bridge, but we do have lessons learned. They are on the website. We have made several presentations. The department of highways and marine division of Department of Transportation made a presentation on the Deh Cho Bridge Lessons Learned. That is on the website. Retrospective Lessons Learned on the Deh Cho Bridge, again prepared by the Department of Transportation, is on our website. The Auditor General’s report is also on the website. We charted out the recommendations of the Auditor General’s report. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have to say to the Minister that the only lessons that were learned were from the review team project. I quote from their report: “The analysis was based on the experience of the delivery team, and many more parts that included political, financial and legal issues were not looked at.”
I have to ask the Minister, will he, once again, commit and fulfill the promise that was made by the previous Minister of Transportation and provide one report, a fully thorough and analyzed and retrospective analysis of the Deh Cho Bridge Project from inception to completion?
I can have that discussion with the department again. We felt like there was no real value in continuing to do a retrospective analysis. We are busy. There are a lot of projects on the go, and the department felt that with the retrospective lessons learned and the Deh Cho Bridge lessons learned, the Levelton Report before we took over and the Auditor General’s report at the point we took over were sufficient for us to move forward, was sufficient to provide information.
The Member is correct that doesn’t cover the financial and the political perspective of what occurred with the bridge, and I’m prepared to put that information together to provide it to the Member or put it on the website.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Colleagues, before we go on today, I’d like to welcome back to the Assembly Mr. Derek Tremblay, our former head of security here. Welcome back to the Assembly, Derek.
Mr. Hawkins.
