Agreed.

Mr. Chairman, there was a significant amount of discussion that did take place in the early days of the development of both of these systems, but there has been significantly less in recent times. The level of detail and the usability of the systems that Public Works is using is different from what I believe is in place for the communities.

This is going back a little bit before my time, but my understanding is there were some significant differences in the types of systems that were developed. So there is not, at this present time, a capacity for sharing back and forth.

Mr. Chairman, in the event that a transfer occurs from, for example, Public Works to another agency, we would certainly make available to that other agency the information we have within our system about the cost to operate it and the types of problems we have had to deal with in the past. However, there is not a direct electronic link between the two. That information would have to be loaded into whichever system is being used in that individual community.

Mr. Chairman, we can certainly take a look at that. Right now, I am not aware that this is creating any difficulties to us, but I am certainly prepared to take a look at that and see whether or not there are any potential efficiencies that could be gained.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The MMS system, from the experience I had with it, I had the understanding there was only one system out there. What the department is saying is there are two. Why would there be two different ones when there was only one out there that people were being trained on in the communities? Why are there two different programs?

Mr. Chairman, I may have the chronology wrong here, but I believe the Department of Public Works and Services was the initial agency that developed or implemented an electronic maintenance management system. That was back in the late 1980s. Somewhere in or around that time or subsequent to that, I understand that Municipal and Community Affairs -- I think it was probably close to the early 1990s -- began development of a system specifically designed for communities for management of their maintenance program.

As I indicated a moment ago, there was a significant amount of discussion at that time as to whether or not the same system could be used or whether not Public Works would agree to using the community system. I believe that the development tended to show some differences in the way we wanted to carry out our individual mandates and the joint development of a system. The potential for joint use kind of broke down in the mid-90s. We have been operating essentially with Public Works operating its system since then.

Those communities which are actually up and running with a system -- which is not a lot of communities, I do not believe -- were using the system that was developed over at MACA. There are certainly similarities in the type of work we are doing. It is conceivable we could use the same system. It has not typically been a problem to date.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If I remember right, in the past when DPW was doing the maintenance system on the equipment territorial-wide, what they would do is have their mechanic drive the vehicle over to Yellowknife Motors or Kingland Ford to get it repaired. Or one of the guys from Yellowknife would come to Rae, for example, look at a furnace when somebody called and said the furnace is not working, and he would come in and say yes, it is definitely not working. So he would call somebody else. Is that the kind of maintenance system they had in place at that time and MACA has improved on it, but they are still not using it?

Mr. Chairman, I am not in a position to be able to speak on what systems MACA is using now or which communities are using systems. The maintenance system the Department of Public Works and Services has been using has been essentially the same system for the last ten years, maybe a little bit over that. Back in the days when we used to have a significant fleet of equipment, the number of checks that were done and the frequency of checks and what is included on those checks was all programmed into the system for vehicles and equipment. They were dealt with on a very regular basis.

In the early '90s, we would predominantly use our own staff for a lot of that work, supplemented by some of the heavy equipment contractors. More recently in the late '90s, we have used private sector contractors almost exclusively.