The answer is yes.

Thank you. Mr. Evaloarjuk.

(Translation) Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This says for accommodations; we are talking about the government and staff housing? As I stated before, is there a mistake here. Can we correct it?

Thank you, Mr. Evaloarjuk. Mr. Minister.

(Translation) We are not talking about actual housing. This is to accommodate offices of the government; buildings. It isn't housing. It is for offices.

Thank you. Operations and maintenance, total operations and maintenance, $23.502 million. Mr. Ootes.

Thank you. Mr. Lovely.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The responsibility for these services falls into a number of different activities within the department, so I couldn't give a clear answer on how many staff are actually involved in that at this point, although it would be possible to put it together fairly quickly. I have a table that shows that information fairly clearly. Those staff wouldn't necessarily be gone as a result of this. It is just that the cost of their salaries would go to the departments that use the services and those departments would buy the services back from the Department of Public Works and Services in the short term and, in the longer term, they might buy their services directly from the private sector as a user-pay initiative moves to user-say and departments have a choice of either buying it from the government or going to the private sector.

Thank you. Member for Yellowknife South, Mr. Ootes.

Thank you, Member for Yellowknife Centre. Mr. Lovely.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The user-pay initiatives that we have been talking about as part of our

1996-97 and 1997-98 business plans cover a wide range of government services to itself. Some of those services are fairly easy to move out of, simply by having the Department of Public Works cast its resources onto the departments that currently have this service delivered on their behalf. The telephone services was a good example of that, where we were paying the bills on behalf of the government centrally and had the money in our budgets to do so. When we were doing it that way, there was no incentive for the departments to save any money because we simply paid the bills on their behalf. However, in our dealings with the phone company, we get a better rate on the phone costs because we pay as one organization rather than 15 to 20 different departments and agencies. So we have maintained the responsibility for paying the bills centrally, but it is a computerized information system that requires a very limited bureaucracy. It is a simple matter of the system charging the departments for the money that is spent on their telephone bills.

So there are those kinds of creative solutions that we will be looking for as we move ahead with the property management user-pay initiative. The difference in property management is at least in the short term, we have a variety of leases with organizations that provide us with office space. So it isn't as though government departments can simply say we want smaller, better or less costly office space, so we are going to divest ourselves of this lease and go somewhere else. We have to fulfil our obligations under those leases and so, at least for the next three to five years, we are going to have to continue to pay the people who are currently providing us with space under contractual arrangements. This one is a little more difficult to do with user-pay than some of the others.

The important thing to recognize as we implement the user-pay initiatives is that at least the actual cost of the organizations to do their business will be reflected in their budgets. It won't be artificially in the budget of the Department of Public Works, in the Department of Personnel, in the Financial Management Board Secretariat. It will be in the hands of the departments and we will know exactly what their programs and services cost because it will be reflected in their main estimates documents. So for the short term, there will be some central administration of the billings, but we should be able to deal with that as some of these leases expire.

Thank you. Accommodation services, operations and maintenance, total operations and maintenance, $23.502 million.

Agreed.

--- Agreed

Thank you. Detail of capital, accommodation services, buildings and works, headquarters, total region, $50,000. Agreed?

Agreed.

--- Agreed

Thank you. Buildings and works, Inuvik, total region, $27,000. Sorry, Fort Smith. I skipped over that one. Total region, Fort Smith, $28,000.

Agreed.

--- Agreed

Buildings and works, Inuvik, total region, $27,000.

Agreed.

--- Agreed

Thank you. Buildings and works, Baffin, total region, $16,000.

Agreed.

--- Agreed

Thank you. Buildings and works, Keewatin, total region, $39,000.