Deh Cho Bridge faced stop-work order

While Northwest Territories MLAs were locked in heated debates last month over the Deh Cho Bridge over the Mackenzie River, the project itself was facing trouble from the federal government, CBC News has learned.

Quarry work on the project was stopped two weeks ago on orders from the federal Indian and Northern Affairs Department. The stop-work order was lifted Monday, but the order was never made public.

In issuing the order on Feb. 13, federal officials maintained that a contractor hired by the bridge corporation did blasting and quarrying work on the site without a permit from the department.

"Authority was given to them to brush the trees and drill the rock … but they weren't allowed to blast," Darnell McCurdy, district manager with the department's South Mackenzie District office, told CBC News on Monday.

"We had done an inspection on Feb. 12 and found that the blast had, in fact, occurred. On the 13th, the inspector issued a stop-work order," he added.

Permits from the federal department fall under the broader authority of the land-use permit issued for the bridge project by the Mackenzie Valley Land and Water Board.

The board received the stop-work order, but never posted it on its online public registry. The notice was still not on the board's website as of Tuesday afternoon.

"There were some instructions issued to the board, to be cautious with the issuance and posting of this item to our public registry," said James Boraski, the board's acting executive director.

"We've tried to contact INAC to find out what the concern was."

But McCurdy said no such instruction was contained in the order: "In the information that I have, I don't find that that instruction was given," he said.

"We provided the stop-work order to the board on the 13th of February, as it was issued to the proponent. I don't know why it wasn't posted."

In the end, McCurdy said the problem was a "lack of communication between the Deh Cho Bridge Corp. and the contractor who was working on their behalf.

"So there won't be any further action taken on this file," he added.

The stop-work order was issued around the same time that MLAs in the legislative assembly were grilling Premier Floyd Roland over costs of the bridge, which aims to link Yellowknife and nearby N.W.T. communities with southern road systems year-round.

Throughout the February legislative session, MLAs demanded answers from Roland about the territorial government's financial commitment to the private-public partnership with the bridge corporation.

Roland promised MLAs he would find out how much it would cost the government to renege on its concession agreement with the Deh Cho Bridge Corp.

But last week, after the session was over, Roland sent a letter to MLAs saying he would not find that out after all, saying that such a cost "would be a very difficult thing to determine."

The week before, the bridge corporation signed a loan for the $165-million project. Roland has admitted that his government is "backstopping" that loan.