Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Madam Chair. The option of selling the planes – as you know, they are not worth an enormous amount of money – is definitely one that we’re seriously looking at. On the assumption that if the budget is approved for these planes, the orders would be put in and that we anticipate that we’d have all 802s ready to go for the fire season of 2017. Until that point, we would be continuing to maintain and keep the 215s. We would start on the fire season and then, once we have the new fleet on line, we would look at what kind of disposal is in our best interest as a government.

The issue of...

Thank you, Madam Chair. With me is the deputy minister, Ernie Campbell; and head of forest fire operations, Bill Mawdsley.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Just quickly to the process. We have a rigorous capital planning process that has been refined over the decades to where it is today, and we all know that it is fully subscribed to and that we have probably a $3 billion infrastructure deficit that we are working hard to try to address.

We are well through this upcoming year’s capital planning process. Every penny has been accounted for. When I look at this motion, be it 60 beds, 30 beds and a full-scale renovation, I would suggest that we are looking at well over $50 million, a motion that is put on our table as we are...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. For projects over $50 million, the policy requires us to look at whether the P3 approach is a viable approach to be considered, and we have done that. The business case has been done and the assessment comes in that yes, it is a viable project and the business case is there under the P3 approach, hence the consideration. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As with all projects, Public Works will be managing the infrastructure project itself, per se, but clearly when the value for money, the issue comes as we proceed with the P3 and that is where we finally go and the prices come in way off the mark, then I will have to look very carefully at the cause of that.

This is not a project that is a cost-plus where money is not an object. It is $350 million. So if that includes looking at other ways of building the project, of course we will look at that. We want to get the best, highest quality project that we can on budget and...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Unless there are specific questions further to the fairly comprehensive response from Minister Abernethy, a lot of mine would just be a repetition. So, we could have that discussion. We do have the policy and we are setting up the P3 corporation. A P3 approach is recognized and encouraged in most jurisdictions, and in this case they’ve done the work, they’ve set a business case, we submitted that last March to committee and that says that the P3 approach is viable and makes sense. As Minister Abernethy said, we’re proceeding down that path. No final determination has...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As we do with all major expenditures like this, we’ll have full engagement with committee on a go-forward basis, especially given the approach being contemplated and the dollar amount on the table.

Mr. Chairman, that is not in fact the case. We are looking at a P3 procurement approach, first because our policy obligates us to for projects over $50 million. We had a lot of discussion around this whole P3 approach around the bridge, which wasn’t actually a P3 project. It is a recognized, valuable method of building infrastructure that’s used out around the world and across Canada. Issues like public interest are paramount. The value for money has to be demonstrable. Appropriate public control and ownership, as the Minister of Health has said, will be preserved. We have to have a clear...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We brought in some professionals on this and they did a survey of the landscape. While there are clearly incidents where things maybe didn’t work according to plan, there are also many instances when they did. They looked at all of those issues, they looked at what was being proposed here, the type of projects, and when they came back with their recommendation, it said that from the balance of all these factors that there is a business case to be made for this project to proceed as a P3.

Keeping in mind all the considerations that have been talked about here today, the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to table the following document, entitled “Public Accounts 2013-2014.”