Thank you, Mr.

McLeod. The wish of committee…. Sorry.

General comments. Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I don’t have a lot of general comments, but what I’d like to do is maybe search out a little more information. Some of the general comments speak to an approach as opposed to specific line items. On one of the pages here — page 3 of the Minister’s opening comments — we talk about $150 million in deferred maintenance. I’m just wondering if they’ve developed a strategy that will help carry out some of that, or what’s the approach on how not only they’ve identified it, I guess — like I said, a strategy. How are they dealing with it?

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. We haven’t come to the detail yet, but I understand your questions are on the opening comments. Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr.

Chairman, we have a total of roughly

$7.5 million in our budget to start working on the deferred maintenance issues. We plan to have that as an ongoing program. This amount would give us the ability to deal with around ten buildings per year.

I appreciate, on page 4…. This is an item I’ve highlighted a few times in the past in the 15th Assembly — the standardized design for

buildings. I’m quite pleased to see it’s written into the Minister’s comments.

The issue I have here is that quite often some of these buildings, although they are important infrastructure…. What happens is the infrastructure then turns from needs to wants, and then from wants to artistic design, and then from artistic design to turning it into an award the whole world gets to see. You go from standardized windows of being normal rectangles to really interesting polygons in some community that you could never maintain if somebody puts a rock through those windows. So I’m pleased to see that some initiative is being taken in this regard.

What I am curious about, specifically, with this is: will a policy be developed and come forward soon? And when can Members expect to see some type of policy that will reflect this mantra cited on page 4 regarding standardized design?

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. I’ll turn to the Minister, but I think we’d agreed we were going to try to give our full general comments and let the Minister respond. So after this — is everybody agreed with that still?

So perhaps after this response you could lay out your general comments.

We’ll get other general comments and have the Minister respond. Minister McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The issue of deferred maintenance has become very serious in the last while. This is one of the first years we’ve had a budget line to address any of the issues. The number of buildings that need attention is growing.

As an attempt to try to deal with the many issues that are challenging our capital process and capital investment, we are convinced that having at least the schematics and a design that’s fairly standard available for the communities and for most of our infrastructure…. We’re finding that, for example, we have water plants across the Northwest Territories — every community has one — and not very many of them are the same. Getting parts, finding people with the expertise on the different types of plants is becoming a very big challenge. We’d like to standardize that.

We’d like to have communities of basically the same size be able to see what they can get, and avoid going to the communities with a blank page and saying, “Tell us what you want.” That usually leads into a very long, drawn-out process that becomes very expensive. This way, we would have facilities that we would have predesigned. Communities could take a look at them and have some say, but not completely design it from scratch. I think that would save us a lot of time. It would reduce our carryovers, and it would probably go a long way in reducing our costs.

Mr.

Chairman, before I go into

continuing my general comments, I would disagree with shutting a Member down. I feel that my privilege as a Member has been taken away and my rights are being stepped on. I would caution the Chair in that regard. Whatever advice is given to shut down a Member’s privilege of debate…. This would be an unusual exercise of that privilege, because I have not given it up. I am prepared to accept the position of the Chair, but I wish to highlight that before I continue.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. We’ll take that into consideration. If you’ll just now deliver your general comments. I believe this has been discussed in committee. You probably missed that session, but I will take that into consideration and ask you to continue with your comments.

Well, I still have a couple of small questions. I feel that they’re appropriate, and I’ll continue with them in that regard.

Mr.

Chairman, we have the infrared thermal

scanning continuing on page 4, and it talks about community buildings. Although I support the GNWT scanning its buildings — and again, there’s no

specific line item that points to this, so that’s why it is appropriate in opening comments — I’m curious as to whether the department actually charges back for this in any way. Is this something we do as a favour while we’re in the community? My thought is it would probably incur either overtime or extra work on behalf of the staff who would be in that designated area. That’s my question, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, the intent of providing the service to the community would be…. If, while we’re in the community and doing our own facilities and buildings, the community was interested in us doing the scan on any of their buildings, we would provide that at no cost. Should a request come in for us to specifically come in to do scans on any building that’s owned by a community, we would expect them to pay for our travel costs but not the actual scanning.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My last comment for opening remarks is I want to make note that it's good to see some ecoTrust money going to some good projects. I'd enjoy the fact that Public Works is working very hard to develop options like heat pumps and selling more wood boilers. It may not be the only solution to our energy crisis and the way it is, but the territorial government, as we all know, pays a fair amount in oil costs and to operate buildings. If we can find a cheaper solution, that certainly is a payback — within a reasonable amount of time, that is — I certainly support. That's highlighted on page 5, where Public Works has leveraged some of the ecoTrust funds from taking money and making it into real projects to deliver real results.

I believe that concludes my opening comments.

Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. As we all know, for this department and also all government departments, we have some major challenges in front of us. For ourselves, especially in the northern region of the Mackenzie Delta and the Beaufort Sea area, where there are very identifiable problems we're running into — from permafrost shifting, to buildings shifting and rotting pilings — I think we're starting to realize that the infrastructure challenges we face in the North are becoming more and more apparent. It's becoming more and more expensive to deal with those issues.

The same thing applies in regard to petroleum products. We realize there are some real logistical challenges we face in the North, just trying to get access to fuel. We had fuel shortages last winter in Inuvik. Fort McPherson was out of fuel, and Inuvik. The costs became so unbearable because of fuel supply, and not the dependable fuel supply that we're used to, because something happened in an

Alberta refinery, where it shut down, that affects the North, especially the northern communities.

It's also important to train people to take over capacity issues. You talked about operators in regard to supply services and water treatment plants and whatnot. I'm glad to see that you've moved in the area of Behchoko. But also, you do have similar arrangements in the communities I

represent — Aklavik, Tsiigehtchic and Fort

McPherson — which are the only three communities left where POL provides that service to the local municipal authority.

Again, there are people who are being trained. They were down here last week getting more training. I'd like to also see something similar to what was done in Behchoko by way of transferring either the people who are there to the local community authority, or get the people who are trained up and running in the plants.

The other big challenge that we face…. I know we talk about finding unique ways of reducing the costs of fossil fuels, but people don’t realize the cost of the alternatives that are going to have to be there to basically convert those communities. Sure, it would be great if we have projects in communities, where you have a small mini-hydro project. But again, those are all very cost-intensive. You're talking tens of millions of dollars to make these conversions and switch over to another system.

At the end of the day, we have to assess, analyze, exactly what the cost of that decision is going to be, weighing the costs of getting off of fossil fuels in these diesel communities. Whatever we do, it has to be universal. It has to be right across the Territories. Everybody in the Northwest Territories depends on diesel fuel to heat their homes, and in most cases, to run their power and also to run their vehicles. I think it's something we have to work on, but again, it's going to be a very costly endeavour.

In regard to the Petroleum Products Division, it does provide the costs to communities. The insanity of how fuel gets to the Northwest Territories is that most of the fuel going to Alberta from Norman Wells goes through a pipeline. It goes south and then goes to a refinery in Alberta. Then we purchase our fuel in regard to the Syncrude plant outside of Edmonton, put it on a rail system, send it to Hay River, put it on a barge, take the barge, go up the river, take the fuel off the barge, put it into tanks, take it off the tanks, and put it in a home or into the power plant. That fuel is moved about ten times before it's finally being used for its end purpose.

We have to find a way to deal with the logistical costs of moving fuel in the Northwest Territories. Buy bulk purchase, by way of putting it in a tank, or buy it from Valdez or wherever we can get the cheapest price, bring it over the top, store that

barge or whatnot in the Beaufort, and distribute to the Beaufort-Delta communities so they don't have to handle this fuel ten times over.

The bottom line for communities is that we have to have sustainable communities. The biggest cost to sustainable communities is energy: the cost of heating our public infrastructure, the cost of deliver fuel services by way of schools, health care centres and whatever. We have to realize that unless there's an alternative that's going to happen overnight and you hit a switch and it will happen…. Again, it's not realistic. So we have to do more planning in that area.

I would just like to state that for the Department of Public Works there are alternatives. We are looking at residual heat systems in the communities. I know, in the community I represent — Fort McPherson — there have been capital investments, put in place by the Gwich'in Development Corporation and the Power Corp, tied into different public buildings and whatnot. But again, it's trying to educate the municipalities, the Department of Public Works and Services and people on the ground that they have to be able to realize that in the long term there will be savings, but you have to be able to review that system and not be opposed to these types of capital investments in those communities.

With that, Mr. Chair, those are some of my general comments. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. I'll turn now to Mr. Jacobson.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just in regard to the petroleum products, it's good to hear that they're looking at the Over the Top route, which is a cheaper way of getting fossil fuels into our communities, such as diesel, which is really needed in the communities I represent in Nunakput. The cost of one community's private sector…. Three really rely on the PPD, the Petroleum Products Division, of the government.

I really worry for this winter in regard to the high cost of fuel in my communities. We don't have any alternative sources like we do here in the capital and in the southern parts of the territory. We rely on the petroleum products in the smaller communities. With the high cost of fuel, that's the big thing that I'm worrying about this year. If we could get it cheaper by the Over the Top route, it's a good thing. It's a lot less strain on the community governments, the hamlets and your housing authority.

From what I see here with the Minister and his staff, it's good to see the progress they're working on. That's all I have to say. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Jacobson. Any more general comments?

Moving on to the response from the Minister. Minister McLeod.

General comments. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to provide a few comments on Public Works and Services. I know the reduction exercise was there and the department was challenged, but they’ve done a good job in coming up with the reductions that were asked. They’re up a little bit, but I think it’s all very defensible.

I wanted to mention that it’s a department where there are a lot of challenges, and the Minister and the management inside that department are managing the issues there quite well. I didn’t have any real concerns with what’s happening there, aside from the fact that we have to be very cognizant of the increases in energy costs. Mr. Bromley spoke earlier of what those are, so we’ve got to keep our eyes squarely on that.

We’ve also got some issues with aging infrastructure that we need to take care of, and asset management — having people in communities that can look after what we have there on the ground. Things are looking relatively good here in Public Works and Services.

The one comment I did have would have to do with the TSC. Again, it’s a valuable service that the TSC provides the government with. But from a budgeting perspective, I’m wondering if any thought’s been given to perhaps having the TSC establish its own budget instead of charging back various departments for utilization of their services. To me, that would be more of a straightforward approach and easier for the public and for Members of this House to comprehend if we had a system like that, where the TSC would have to state their budget on an annual basis. That’s something that as we go forward, we can work through the business plans next year or come up with a different model, because it is a little bit confusing following all the chargebacks to the TSC.

Those are just some comments, Mr. Chairman. Again, I wanted to thank the Minister and his staff. I think things here, for the most part….

One other thing I did want to mention: I was very impressed with the Minister and the department for coming up with the briefing on the capital-planning process and some big issues there that we’re trying to tackle as a government, and I think they’ve done a tremendous job in that area too. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It’s always good to hear kind remarks about some of the work we’ve been taking on.

There are a number of things that we’ve focused on this time around as we brought our budget forward. We’ve really tried to focus our reductions on areas that we felt would avoid cutbacks to programs or program areas — some of the statutory requirements and programs that are scheduled to sunset or had significant concerns from the Members of this House. It’s also allowed us, in our new initiatives, to bring some investment to an area of real concern, and that is deferred maintenance. We’ve also been able to hire a number of apprentices, so we’re quite happy with that, that these things are in our budget.

The issue about the TSC having their own budget is something, up to this point, our staff has had general discussion on. We’ve really not pursued this as a desired way to do this, because right now, through a chargeback system, the growth is really paid for by the departments, and the onus is on the departments to control the growth. Going to another system, where we would put it in our budget, we may lose some of that. Thank you.