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The government of Newfoundland and Labrador spent about $2.6 million on a new K-12 school in Cartwright before putting the project on hold earlier this week.<\/p>\n
The main contract for the development was estimated at $38.4 million at the time it was awarded to JMJ Holdings Limited, back in July 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Residents watched as site clearing began.<\/p>\n
That $2.6 million was spent then-to-now, according to an emailed response to questions provided to Radio-Canada by a communications staff member for the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure. The project stood less than six per cent complete.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Infrastructure Minister Barry Petten said it was clear the original estimates weren’t standing.<\/p>\n
“The $38 million was out the door now,” he told CBC Radio\u2019s Labrador Morning.<\/p>\n
The best estimate provided by government was for the cost to be $50 million. For context, at the time the project was announced, the province’s entire budget for the year for advancing work on four new schools was $55.5 million.<\/p>\n
Petten said the costs for the Cartwright school were running higher for several reasons, including unexpected geotechnical issues.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In its own statement Thursday, JMJ acknowledged there were issues arising.<\/p>\n
“During construction, JMJ learned that the site for the Cartwright school had substantial issues that would have required costly remediation work,” reads the statement.<\/p>\n
The costs to date for the province do not include any potential settlement publicly requested by the general contractor, for itself and subcontractors.<\/p>\n
Pursuing ‘more economic alternative’<\/p>\n
Petten said he thinks the halt to construction and a new plan will be the best decision financially in the long run.<\/p>\n
“At the end of the day we’ll be in a much better financial situation as a result of doing this. And we can proceed at a much more economic alternative and we’ll still accomplish the same goal and we’ll save the treasury a lot of money,” Petten said.<\/p>\n
Education Minister Paul Dinn was asked about the Cartwright school construction and what a changing timeline for new or renewed facilities means for children’s education.<\/p>\n
“All I can say is that it’s very much on our radar and we’re going to work forward, to come up with a solution here that serves the residents and gives their children an opportunity to succeed,” he told CBC Radio’s The St. John’s Morning Show on Friday.<\/p>\n
Download our\u00a0free CBC News app<\/a>\u00a0to sign up for push alerts for CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. Sign up for our\u00a0daily headlines newsletter here<\/a>. Click\u00a0here to visit our landing page<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 3 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":719980,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[45,49,48],"class_list":["post-719979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=719979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/719980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=719979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=719979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=719979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}