Jane Groenewegen

Mr. Chair, is this perimeter fencing to keep the people in or to keep the people out? Is it to keep the public out or to keep the inmates in? The correctional centre has been operating for quite a while now, and I’d like to suggest we should probably have a better system in place than a chain-link fence.

They had no business proceeding without federal support, even though they said that if federal support wasn’t forthcoming, the project wouldn’t continue. They had no business committing future governments to additional investments of $2 million a year. They had no business exposing our government to financial harm by agreeing to absorb eligible cost overruns as long as they pertain to things that are unforeseen.

They certainly had no business assuming what was most important to Northerners in light of their knowledge of upcoming financial circumstances that resulted in this same government...

Mr. Chairman, I have a point of order. Is Mr. Miltenberger speaking to this as a Minister of the cabinet, or he is speaking to this as the MLA for Thebacha?

I know there’s a motion on the floor, but I’ve got to tell you that I don’t think I’ve ever heard a Minister in this House speak to a capital project in his or her riding in this kind of a forum. I understand why Ms. Lee answered the question; she’s the Minister of Health. I understand why the Premier spoke to it; he brought forward the bill. I am not understanding in what capacity Mr. Miltenberger is speaking to this. Not that I’m trying...

Mr. Chairman, we would like to consider Bill 1, Interim Appropriation Act, 2008-2009.

Mr. Speaker, two motions were passed in the 15th Assembly. I believe they were unanimously passed by the Regular Members of this House.

The Premier had to have known that there were concerns on this side of the House with the Deh Cho Bridge project. It has been widely publicized that there were questions and concerns.

The fact that he'd had a chance to think, for I don't know how many months, he might be the Premier, and with headlines written for months in advance that he was going to be the Premier, I can't help it if he didn't assign that cabinet portfolio. But that was his choice.

Let’s go on...

I had a chance to look over a bit more Hansard here. I want to go back to this. You know, these things just don’t go away just because we decide to sweep them under the carpet.

The concession agreement was signed on September 28. We found out November 27 — two months later. Now, the Premier said we didn’t ask the right question. We didn’t say, “Did you sign the concession agreement in the last government?” We weren’t that direct.

Here’s a quote from Hansard, again on October 19. This is Mr. Ramsay: “Are we going to be able to see the concession agreement? Are we going to be able to see the...

In light of the absolute barrage of questions that the Premier was asked, and given that he had full knowledge that the concession agreement had already been signed, I want to ask the Premier did he not feel that he had any duty to the Members of this House to just inform us of this very significant milestone which had been passed on the Deh Cho Bridge project: that the concession agreement had, in fact, already been signed? We had to find this out weeks and weeks later, after asking all session.

Did the Premier feel no obligation to open this and transparently share something that significant...

Mr. Speaker, the Premier has sort of inferred that he doesn’t like the idea of this debate. I can certainly understand why. It’s not a debate that he could actually win, because he says that we did not ask for the updated cost/benefit analysis and we didn’t pass any motions in this House asking for the concession agreement.

I’m looking at Hansard from May 10, when Mr. Ramsay states that it is very important that the government shares the information with the Members of the House so that we can ask questions so we can access the risk to the government, speaking of the Deh Cho Bridge project...

This is an extremely elaborate facility to be built. I don’t know what it topped out at — $50 million or so. There were things designed into the building for meeting together. I definitely know there was an aboriginal healing meeting room component. I toured the facility; I saw it.

If you’ve got this kind of money to throw around, I would rather see it go into some kind of programming. It isn’t about the stones and the bricks and mortar. That isn’t what’s going to heal people. If you want to bring people in and have elders come and talk to the people, put the money into programming.

SMCC in Hay...

Mr. Speaker, the Premier a few days ago committed in this House to putting together an estimate of what it would cost for us to terminate this agreement to proceed with the Deh Cho Bridge. A few days have now passed. I’d like to know where we’re at on that evaluation on what it would cost to terminate this agreement.