NDP questions cost, management of Regina Bypass

The Regina Bypass project was celebrated Tuesday at a luncheon hosted by the Regina & District Chamber of Commerce for being on budget and on schedule, but the NDP is not convinced that the cost of the project is justified or that it has benefited Saskatchewan as much as it could.

“This is a load of nonsense from a government that’s mismanaged this project and has really let it go off the rails with a massive overrun, in this case to a foreign corporation,” insisted NDP Leader Trent Wotherspoon. The foreign corporation Wotherspoon refers to is Vinci Construction. Based in France, it is the lead company working on the bypass.

According to Gordon Wyant, minister responsible for SaskBuilds, over 70 per cent of the companies working on the bypass are from Saskatchewan. But Wotherspoon says the Saskatchewan Party has not been able to tell the public where the money is going and is disappointed that more Saskatchewan companies aren’t involved in the project.

“(Taxpayers) deserve to know where the dollars are flowing. They deserve to know why more Saskatchewan companies aren’t engaged,” said Wotherspoon.

He said that even though Saskatchewan companies make up the majority of those working on the project, there is no way to tell if that also means the majority of the profit stays in Saskatchewan.

Cost has also been a point of controversy since the project was expanded from the initial $400-million concept of the bypass in the south end to include two other projects in east and west Regina, both of which were estimated to cost approximately $400 million.

Wotherspoon admitted “the scope changes are important” but he doesn’t think the costs are justified.

In the 2017-18 provincial budget, another $500-million payment was made to the project as per the contract. The capital projects budget, which funds work on other highways and infrastructure for the entire province, decreased from $355 million to $343 million.

Minister of Highways and Infrastructure David Marit says that one did not impact the other.

“Our capital money went down slightly, but not too much if you look historically ... It was just a tighter budget and we had to look at some capital projects, but overall I’m pretty happy with our budget and what we are still able to do on the capital side,” said Marit.

Since the contract for the bypass is fixed, Marit said that cost will not increase. It is up to the partners to finish the project on time and with the amount of money agreed on.

“I don’t want to get political, but of course the NDP know all this. We’ve explained it all to them for several times over. However, they believe it’s in their best interest to smear the project,” said Marit. “So we recognize that there are a lot of good questions but we believe there are good answers.”

According to Marit, the east section is one year ahead of schedule, due to open in the fall. The project in its entirety is on schedule to wrap up in 2019. The budget of $1.88 billion includes 34 years of maintenance, reconstruction and snow removal.