Thank you, Madam Chair. This supp covers a number of different areas; that's to be expected. The one aspect of this that comes through in several departments, Madam Chair, mainly through RWED, but also in Education, Culture and Employment, MACA and Finance, are a number of initiatives related to pipeline preparation and planning. The largest of these is, I believe, under RWED and this is to provide funding to
establish a Mackenzie Valley pipeline office. We are talking about the creation of six positions here, six-and-a-half positions actually. There are other new PYs being created from some of these other areas. In the research that committee has undertaken, Madam Chair, it seems that with existing positions already dedicated to pipeline research and preparations, plus these new ones, plus some of the auxiliary ones that other departments are starting up, we are looking at assembling a force here of somewhere in the neighbourhood of perhaps a dozen or 15 different people involved in the pipeline preparation.
This is something that I think is long overdue. A fair amount of profile has already been given on this topic by this assembly, Madam Chair, in the creation of a joint committee of three Ministers, three Members, a rather large group that is going to undertake from a political direction some of the administration here. Of course, now we are seeing an administrative team being put together here and we are also seeing our counterparts with the federal government and in private industry assembling their teams. So all this seems to be moving along quite nicely.
My concern here, Madam Chair, is that in all of the positions that have been outlined in this supp with the research available to us so far, we see nothing in the GNWT's preparation that covers the interest of what I would call the social agenda. All of the positions, Madam Chair, relate to a regulatory, administrative or bureaucratic or policy kinds of issues very much directed at serving and feeding the interest of government. Madam Chair, there have been consistent cries from the communities that their social infrastructure is very vulnerable to the impacts of this sudden boom or impact that is going to happen. We all have a pretty good sense of what it's going to be like. We've had experience here with the Norman Wells pipeline in the 1980s. We don't want to do that again.
So the concern that I am flagging here, Madam Chair, is so far our attempts at coordinating pipeline-related activities are going to fail the people in the small communities, large communities on that route as well, for that matter. We just don't seem to get it, Madam Chair, that this isn't all an economic and efficiency exercise. This is something that is really going to make a difference at the street level, at the community level, at the doorstep of virtually every family that lives in the community. We are not paying attention to our obligation and our duties to coordinate.
So I think I can leave it there, Madam Chair. By the time I can get to that page, I can have some other information to present. I would like to serve notice here in committee that I am prepared to move deleting this $850,000 item anticipating, of course, that committee or that the government will go back and look at how it's balancing our efforts at coordinating these activities and that we can anticipate a new supp but better addressing the social concerns perhaps later on in the year.
The question I would like to put to the Minister in general comments, Madam Chair, is at this very senior coordinating level, why aren't we seeing representatives and officers and duties and mandates that will address social infrastructure needs of a Mackenzie Valley pipeline project? Thank you, Madam Chair.