David Ramsay

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m going to speak today about the Auditor General’s report on the Deh Cho Bridge Project. I want to start by saying that I appreciate the time and effort that Ms. Sheila Fraser and her staff have provided on this audit.

The Auditor General’s report confirms clearly and concisely that the concerns I have repeatedly expressed the past seven years on the decision to proceed with the project and its subsequent management are legitimate and real. What becomes abundantly clear is this project, as it was sold to Members and the public as a P3 project, was not a P3 project and...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Going back to my earlier comments where I had stated that the committee had asked the Minister for...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’ve covered a lot of ground on my comments already, but again, I think it was a challenge for the committee to come to some consensus on what the amendment should be. At the end of the day, there was a lot of debate and discussion about what they should be. My feeling is there probably still is and there always will be, but that’s the nature of what we do. Fortunately, Mr. Chairman, we live in a society and a place where we can get out and listen to the public and take what we hear and try to put that into place in legislation that’s being proposed. The public hearing...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that this committee recommends that the Government of the Northwest Territories immediately begin developing comprehensive animal protection legislation for introduction early in the life of the 17th Assembly. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First of all I want to thank very much my colleague Mr. Abernethy, MLA for Great Slave, for his determination in bringing this motion forward. It’s not an easy thing to do and I think he has shown a lot of courage and conviction in bringing this issue forward to the House today in an effort to get some answers for the family. I couldn’t agree with him more in his statement that the family deserves answers.

Stanton has to be taken to task for providing answers. We owe it to the public that we serve to have answers provided to that family. It’s this family in this case and...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d have to wonder whether the team that the Minister speaks of was hired before the audit was conducted or they’ve recently been hired to address the weaknesses that the Auditor General identifies in her report. Mr. Speaker, obviously one of the most important risks going forward is the construction costs on this and in that matrix it does not address the risk the department might face should the bridge be completed late, and we’ve talked numerous times about this. I’d like to ask the Minister specifically about that question. How is the department going to handle...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I just have a few more questions today for the Minister of Transportation getting back to the Auditor General’s report. Honestly, this bridge is being built in a very challenging environment across the Mackenzie River, one of the great rivers of the world, and in a very remote location of the Northwest Territories. Construction costs, Mr. Speaker, would seem to me to be a risk that would be evident from day one. I’d like to ask the Minister of Transportation how the Department of Transportation is managing the risks on construction costs on that project going forward...

Mr. Speaker, I also wanted to ask a question today about concerns over the design. Also in the Auditor General’s report it talks about concerns over the design being brought forward by the Department of Transportation and somebody somewhere overriding a recommendation of the department to continue to waive the requirement for the design being done and to proceed with construction. It is paragraph 27, if the Minister wants to have a look at that. I would like to ask how that could happen. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will ask questions to the Minister of Transportation regarding the Deh Cho Bridge on decisions made by this current government under their watch today.

Mr. Speaker, in reading the Auditor General’s report, it would appear that an external audit of the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation’s financial statements had not been done while the Auditor General was looking at this project. That means that trying to put a figure on the cost to date on that project just leaves a lot to be questioned. Does the Minister have a cost to date on the Deh Cho Bridge Project? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I certainly respect my colleague’s view of this. I also respect the fact that the committee’s wish was to get rid of the traditional and locally accepted practices, clauses that were in the original amendments, ones that the committee had actually asked for and the department brought forward amendments that contain that wording, local and traditionally accepted practices. The committee asked for that and we got it in spades.

When we went out to public hearings, we heard, again, overwhelmingly that we shouldn’t be allowing for any exceptions to the abuse, neglect or...