Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The report or response to the interim appropriation report was read into the record earlier today, into these proceedings. Just to speak to those issues in a little bit more detail.
This is an unusual budgeting year because of the Territorial election. It throws us off our normal schedule and thus the need for an interim appropriation. I think the interim appropriation from an O&M point of view can be fairly well characterized as a status quo kind of extension of previous fiscal years’ operations.
I think that where we got into more concentrated discussion was around the capital that the government felt it was necessary to incorporate into the interim appropriation. Certainly, the way we are somewhat or even, I should say, extensively affected by things such as our short summer season and that some of our shipping methods in the Northwest Territories have a seasonal aspect to them as well, we were very interested in knowing which capital projects needed to be advanced and brought into an interim appropriation as opposed to an irregular budgeting process. We were able to obtain information from the government as to the rationale for including as much capital in the interim appropriation as was contained in there, so there has been some dialogue back and forth with the government with respect to the capital pieces.
Some of the things that we were concerned about not interfering with were where there was already a contractual arrangement that had been put in place for a certain project and there were obligations to meet under that. We were also obviously concerned about any projects that needed to be advanced in a timely manner because of any safety or code issues. In our capital planning criteria, of course, the protection of people and the protection of assets are very high on that list of priorities. And the other thing that we didn’t want to be ignorant of, I suppose, was the need to pass things in order for materials to be shipped so that things could be built at the most cost-effective time of the year. When you start getting into winter construction and hoarding and heating and all kinds of other costs, it doesn’t take long to add a lot of money onto your capital project. So those are the kinds of things that we were looking for.
Anything that could be deferred we were wanting to defer to a normal process, so we did get information back on those projects. On the individual projects I think Members will have questions and comments, but I would like to thank
the government for doing some extra work for us to help us understand the need to include certain projects in the interim appropriation.
So with that focus on the capital part of the interim appropriation as well, we felt it was necessary to discuss the entire capital planning process and how we go about doing that. We feel a lot of pressure. We have limited money for capital, we have a lot of capital demands on our budget and we want to ensure that the capital planning process is such that we can assure ourselves that we’re getting the most value for the money that we do have to spend and that we limit things like capital carryovers.
Also, looking at the idea that the value of a dollar today might have less value a year from now and that we don’t have a crystal ball, we can’t judge what other kinds of influences are going to come to bear on the price of capital projects in the future. Right now there’s a lot of competition for trades people and workers for some of the building demands in Alberta. We feel in some ways that here in the Northwest Territories we’ve been swept up in those fast-rising costs of capital projects, and we want to look at ways of mitigating that, whether it means staging or pacing projects, I guess, in such a way that we can maximize the use of Northern contractors, maximize Northern content in those projects and certainly maximize Northern workers. If there are ways that we as a government can make decisions that will positively impact those things, those are the kinds of decisions that we want to make.
Also, in our capital planning it’s been brought up — and it’s a very good point, and I’m sure Members will want to elaborate on this — that we have gone away from standardized types of design and engineering on buildings, and we’ve put a lot of emphasis on consulting with client departments. PWS has put a lot of emphasis on consulting with client departments on what they’re looking at. And then a lot of consulting is done around programming that’s going to be in these facilities, and I think that in doing so, maybe we have gone a little too far the other way.
If you have a chance to build a major piece of capital infrastructure, it would be nice if it was reflective of the area. There are a lot of things that would be nice, but given the demands on our capital budget, I think we have to think a little bit more about utility, and certainly we need to think about the ongoing costs of operating those facilities. The O&M piece can soon add up in years to come, so the integration of more standardized design and engineering of buildings will help steer away from perhaps some architectural features that might cost us a lot. Also, we need to think about conservation and efficiency of buildings. We need to think about how much we need to spend at the front end to ensure that we aren’t paying exorbitant
operation and maintenance costs on an ongoing basis. So those are things that I think it would be very prudent of our government to consider when it comes to our capital.
With that, Mr. Chairman, like I said, I’m sure other Members have things they’d like to raise and points they would like to elaborate on with respect to the interim appropriation, so I’ll leave my general comments at that. Thank you.