The Muskrat Falls Inquiry heard the province’s top civil servant of the day accuse Nalcor of being dishonest, and working with two sets of numbers.
Julia Mullaley, currently the province’s Auditor General, was Clerk of the Executive Council in the days following sanction. She told co-counsel Barry Learmonth this morning that the paper trail angers her as it clearly shows the cost of the project escalating.
Emails are being circulated among senior officials at Nalcor talking about $7-billion, a 12 per cent increase over the “public” number of $6.2-billion.
She can’t imagine any public servant knowing the new number but not bringing it in for a greater discussion.
Meanwhile, the search continued for the three missing notebooks kept by Mullaley during her time as Clerk of the Executive Branch. Nobody had been able to find them thus far, but this morning Commissioner Richard LeBlanc overruled a decision by the Executive Council which prevented Mullaley from accessing the government storage vault.
Mullaley is spent time during her lunch hour at Confederation Building looking for the absent notes.
Consumer Advocate Shares Scathing Assessment
(Muskrat Falls construction, file photo courtesy Nalcor.)
The governments of the day “collapsed under the weight of their own incompetence” when it came to the sanction and construction of Muskrat Falls.
That’s the assessment of Consumer Advocate Dennis Browne as the second phase of the Muskrat Falls Inquiry continues.
Phase Two is focused on the construction phase of the project.
Browne says we’re getting closer to answers as to how the project costs ballooned from $6.2-billion at sanction to well over $12-billion.
Browne says the government of the day deferred completely to Nalcor, did none of its own due diligence, and did not appoint any outside oversight.
