Qujannamiik. Page 7-17, utilities, operations and maintenance, total operations and maintenance, $21.150 million. Agreed?

Agreed.

--- Agreed

Supply Services

Thank you. Page 7-18, supply services, operations and maintenance, total operations and maintenance, $6.848 million. Agreed?

Mr. Henry.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, does the department provide these services to other departments?

Thank you. Mr. Minister.

Mr. Chairman, the Department of Public Works assists other departments in buying these services. We just assist them.

Qujannamiik. Mr. Henry.

Do I understand then that the department doesn't have a criteria that they give to departments, or do the departments just come and say this is what we want?

Thank you. Mr. Minister.

Mr. Chairman, it varies. For some of the services, the departments will come to the Department of Public Works and Services and tell us what we need and we will assist them in whatever way we can.

In other areas, especially in things like purchasing, there are standards and there are limits, et cetera, that are spelled out.

Thank you. Supply services. Mr. Henry.

Do I understand that at least the Department of Public Works doesn't set any criteria for other departments? Each department sets their own, is that right, as far as quality goes?

Thank you. Mr. Minister.

I'll ask Mr. Waddell to answer that.

Mr. Waddell.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It does depend, to some degree, on the type of service. There is a whole host of different services under this particular activity, but for purchasing of computers, for example, there are standards that are in place government-wide that departments are to conform to.

In terms of some printing services that people may wish to have for special publications, basically, that would be the department's call as to how they would like something printed or published. But they would use our services in terms of obtaining the best design service in the private sector and so on.

Thank you. Supply services, total operations and maintenance. Mr. Henry.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I guess the point I'm trying to get at is there are many such documents that are produced. I mean, this one here is pretty old. It was in February 1990. I would suspect this document would go out of the Territories, also, and I think there are many cases where documents try and promote tourism and that. You have another market that you have to compete with, with documents that are prepared by different departments. What I'm looking for is some direction on who could set the criteria for the quality that goes into it. These products are pretty expensive to produce. You know, coloured and that. I guess what I'm looking for is some direction as to who could we approach to look at the overall cost in providing something in black and white, as opposed to colour, from a practical point of view. Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Lovely.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The difficulty in dealing with the whole publications area is the fact that there are so many different reasons and so many different audiences that we're trying to appeal to with different publications. Years ago, almost all government departments used to put out an annual report and it cost the government a lot of money because there were no clear definitions of the standards which should apply, whether an annual report should be prepared, and where it wasn't appropriate to do so because in some departments it doesn't make sense to have an annual report for an organization that only provides

internal services; like Public Works, for example. So we stopped doing annual reports, generally, three to five years ago. But when we moved away from the central control of the standards of publication, the kind of documents that were put out, we put it in the hands of departments to make those kinds of decisions themselves, based on who they had to appeal to in terms of the audience, where they could get the best deal, what kind of message they were trying to convey. 'So there is no clear standard on exactly what a public should look like, but every department is guided by who they have to appeal to, but also how much money they're spending and is it a cost-effective use of government funds.

We find generally that departments rely on us to give them advice on whether or not they're getting a good deal. That's the sort of central service that we provide and we make sure that we follow the contracting regulations.

Thank you. Supply services. Mr. Ootes.