Bill Braden

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions this afternoon are for Mr. Roland as the Minister for Public Works and Services and the department that has historically had, I understand, a kind of a watchdog capacity for regulatory matters, and that would include, I'm assuming, Mr. Speaker, the Canadian Radio/Television Telecommunications Commission. Mr. Speaker, the GNWT has kept an eye on these kinds of regulatory matters. There are hearings scheduled for Whitehorse next month on a major new regulatory framework for NorthwesTel, the major service provider of telecommunication services across the...

Yes, okay, I’ve got the information or the confirmation that I was seeking here and that is that a significant part in the accountability process that we need to have on our side of the House was missed. That reason alone will justify my support of the upcoming motion to delete this item, Mr. Chairman. As I’ve said in the context of this debate before, I think just about everybody on this side has added their voice to we do not want to deny Fort Simpson a valuable part of their community infrastructure, but we’ve got to be able to hold the government to account on the way decisions are made...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Through the Minister Roland or directly I’d like to see if the client department, ECE, could help committee out with some of the background on this.

Mr. Chairman, as the Minister has just outlined, we do have a capital planning process. It normally takes a year or two of discussion and negotiation and preparation to even get a particular project in the cycle of, I guess competition with other projects before it may finally land on our desks here and we can actually approve a project. So it is a multi-year situation. The kind of project that the Deh Cho Hall is, is I...

Yes, okay, I’ve got the information or the confirmation that I was seeking here and that is that a significant part in the accountability process that we need to have on our side of the House was missed. That reason alone will justify my support of the upcoming motion to delete this item, Mr. Chairman. As I’ve said in the context of this debate before, I think just about everybody on this side has added their voice to we do not want to deny Fort Simpson a valuable part of their community infrastructure, but we’ve got to be able to hold the government to account on the way decisions are made...

Mr. Speaker, has the GNWT consulted with any of the major user groups in the NWT, like the business or the mining industry communities, other levels of government and consumers, to really verify that its positions are going to be the ones that accurately reflect what we want to have put before the CRTC? What is the level of consultation that we have undertaken, Mr. Speaker?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Through the Minister Roland or directly I’d like to see if the client department, ECE, could help committee out with some of the background on this.

Mr. Chairman, as the Minister has just outlined, we do have a capital planning process. It normally takes a year or two of discussion and negotiation and preparation to even get a particular project in the cycle of, I guess competition with other projects before it may finally land on our desks here and we can actually approve a project. So it is a multi-year situation. The kind of project that the Deh Cho Hall is, is I...

Mr. Speaker, does that mean we are going to defend NorthwesTel's, in effect, monopoly here for at least some of the communities, and we're going to continue asking the CRTC to protect that monopoly through regulatory affairs, Mr. Speaker?

Mr. Speaker, has the GNWT consulted with any of the major user groups in the NWT, like the business or the mining industry communities, other levels of government and consumers, to really verify that its positions are going to be the ones that accurately reflect what we want to have put before the CRTC? What is the level of consultation that we have undertaken, Mr. Speaker?

That’s all. Thanks, Madam Chair.

Two to four years, thank you. Two to four years’ life out of this building and even then we are looking at shutting it down. Mr. Chairman, this pushes the notion of value for money way out there into the stratosphere. It’s almost extraordinary that the department would bring such a scenario to the floor of the Assembly and ask for approval of it. If we do the math on this, as the Minister has already advised us on some previous projects, we are looking at an annual increase in the capital construction costs in the Northwest Territories of at least 10 percent per year. So we take something we...