By Michael Ganley -- No mention of Deh Cho Bridge at infrastructure conference: Mackenzie River gong show behind schedule, subject of lawsuit

Why do so many of my columns begin at conferences? I guess it’s because that’s what we do up here. We travel great distances – sometimes to my backyard and sometimes to yours – to gather and confer. They can be tedious, but they’re a necessary evil in the North: It can be tough to get together for coffee, lunch or a meeting with the people you’re doing business with (or in my case, covering) when your land mass is almost four million square kilometres. Instead, we all agree on a set of dates and show up at one place.

At least that’s what I tell the publisher.

Anyways, the conference this column starts at was right here in Yellowknife, making it easy (for me) to attend. It was called the Strategic Northern Infrastructure Conference. It was high-powered, hosted by the Conservative candidate for the Western Arctic (undeclared, just waiting for the election call) Brendan Bell and former minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (in Jean Chrétien’s cabinet), Robert Nault. The two managed to attract two territorial premiers (deputy premier Peter Taptuna represented Nunavut), scores of senior civil servants, and many of the top businesspeople in the North. Clearly, in addition to expressing his concern over the sorry state of territorial infrastructure, Bell was flexing his political muscle.

The conference was billed as a discussion on the many infrastructure shortcomings from which the North suffers. There have been many like it in the past, and will be many more in the future. Charlie Lyall spoke with conviction about the Bathurst Inlet port and road. Russell Newmark made a convincing case for a port in Tuktoyaktuk. Marine infrastructure for Nunavut was on the agenda, and hydro-electricity projects from across the North, and communications infrastructure. There was even time to discuss that most wondrous of possibilities, airships to the Arctic (word is there will be a prototype in Hay River for the Start Your Engines conference next May – just one more reason to go to that one).

The irony of the conference was that nowhere on the bill was there any discussion of one of the few pieces of infrastructure we’ve actually gotten around to (partially) building in the NWT in the past decade, the Deh Cho Bridge. Perhaps that’s because the project is quickly becoming a gong show, and Bell didn’t feel like piling on.

Nobody’s really sure the bridge was a good idea in the first place. At $165-million, it’s a massive project for this sparsely populated territory, and will only serve half its population. Right now, four piers sit alone, forlornly stuck in the middle of the Mackenzie River, all seemingly at slightly different angles. Construction is way behind schedule, a major design review is underway, and the lawsuits have begun. The primary contractor on the project, New Brunswick-based Atcon Construction, and the private entity tasked with building the bridge, the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation, have been sued by sub-contractor Ruskin Construction for $10-million.

The statement of claim reads like a horror story. Not only is Atcon behind on its bills, if the claims made by Ruskin have merit (and I stress these have not been proven in a court of law), Atcon is out of its league tackling a project of this size this far from home. Ruskin claims that Atcon supplied inferior materials late and out of order, it supplied inaccurate design drawings, it didn’t have the correct fisheries authorizations, there was inconsistency in the quality of concrete, the worksite was not in the appropriate state, camp accommodations weren’t suitable, Atcon wouldn’t extend the work schedule despite causing delays, and more.

Perhaps Atcon, like the rest of the economy, is turning around. Recent news has the company settling hundreds of outstanding bills with New Brunswick suppliers. It owed just about everybody, from the Chuckwag’n Takeout in Bouctouche, NB ($496) to Irving Oil ($13,863), to the provincial department of natural resources ($272,958) and a regional heavy equipment dealer ($620,000).

Atcon was only able to pay off all those debts because the New Brunswick government provided it with $50-million in loan guarantees. As part of the deal, the provincial government insisted that Atcon’s CEO, Robbie Tozer, accept an advisory board of leading lights from the Atlantic business community to help guide the company. Perhaps the most telling observation came from the board’s chairman, Purdy Crawford, a seasoned executive and lawyer. He told a New Brunswick newspaper that Tozer is a great entrepreneur who is slowly becoming a sophisticated businessman. “But entrepreneurs have trouble making that adjustment.”

Great. We’re the training ground for a smooth-talking Maritimer who charmed the pants off our elected leaders, leaving the people of the NWT holding the bag.