Michael McLeod

Yes, but, Mr. Speaker... Mr. Speaker, that’s correct, but if there are any issues that arise that are attributed to something we’ve done or that are under our responsibility, then we would have to absorb those costs. Thank you.

Thank you. It’s a difficult situation we’re in. We have our contractors that are listening to this discussion, we’ve already been contacted by the contractors raising concerns over some of the Member’s comments that are in the contract. There’s a proprietary issue that we’re dealing with here. These issues are dealt with in the contract. I’m not in a position to disclose it at this time, Mr. Speaker. I’ll have to reassure the Member that these issues were things that were taken into consideration. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. A diversified economy providing opportunities to all communities and regions, along with sustainable, vibrant, safe communities are the two goals of this Legislative Assembly. An all-weather highway running the length of the Mackenzie Valley will be a major step in achieving those goals. The Government of the Northwest Territories continues to do work to prepare for the future construction of the Mackenzie Valley Highway to Tuktoyaktuk. Since I last updated this Assembly on the highway, we made significant progress.

Through the government’s efforts, we have secured the...

We are closely tracking all expenditures. We have a breakdown, we have cash flow charts, we have variances, we have spreadsheets that provide all the information that the Member has brought forward, we have a breakdown of the budget by various components, we provide year-to-year expenditures on each item and we forecast each expenditure to the completion of the project, so we do have all the information and we do track it very closely. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, Transportation and our officials track all expenditures and have the monthly reports, the daily reports and the annual auditing of all revenues and expenditures. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I believe the audit is a comprehensive audit that includes the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation’s financial statements. I think that is all available for this year very shortly. I understand an audit has been completed just in the recent weeks. I can certainly try to get my hands on it for the Member. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have with me today Mr. Mike Aumond, deputy minister of Municipal and Community Affairs; Laura Gareau is the director of corporate affairs at MACA; also we have with us today Ms. Kelly McLaughlin, legislative counsel, Department of Justice. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I also wanted to recognize Margaret Leishman. This is her second visit here during this session and I’d like to welcome her here. Thank you.

Thank you. I’m glad the Member pointed out risks. Mr. Speaker, this is the risk of asking for an Auditor General operational audit a few days after we assume the project completely in the responsibility of the government. The Auditor General did a lot of this work as we were putting our team together, as we were putting our plans together, and this document reflects that, Mr. Speaker. It’s unfortunate. Our preference would have been to have the final audit at the end of the project. I stated many times before that it’s really stretched our resources. We’ve been audited for eight months out of...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’ve put together a team of experts from across the country, I should say across the world, that are very experienced, probably the best in their field and they’ve put together a risk matrix that identifies all the potential challenges that are out there. Anything that may happen, they develop an action plan that would require a response and this is the area that the Auditor General has flagged as having some concern.

Mr. Speaker, we should, I guess, put into perspective first of all what risk means to the Auditor General and everybody else, the ordinary person on the...