Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I won’t use a lot of time, but what I want to do is cite timing and process. First on the timing. I really like the timing. One of the complaints I generally hear and can obviously see is that timing is a problem. It’s been cited before, but I think it’s important to put it on the record from my perspective. When we approve the capital budgets at the end of March, it doesn’t get ignited into the realm of reality until April, May, June. Tenders come in; projects don’t start until the fall — those types of problems.

Now, that’s obviously not every project. We know that. But the reality is that timing becomes a significant issue in our very short construction season — our season when we have to send things up by a barge, our trucking season. If you live in one of those communities in Nunakput riding, you need to get that big barge all the way around. You know there are a lot of facilitative problems for planning. So, on timing, I’m really pleased with this idea of moving it forward. It’s something I sincerely support, and I want to thank Public Works in the effort that they have done to collaborate on this.

Some of the best work I’ve seen lately was one of the briefings we had a little while ago about Public Works understanding the tough challenges of delivering things on time, on budget and facilitating that. To me this sort of dovetails nicely into realizing that, yes, we have a problem, and now we are finding solutions for it. So my compliments go to the department and the team that worked on this. I know it wasn’t just one individual; it’s a team.

As far as the product, we now have a capital plan for our estimates that…. I think we’re given it as a lump sum. My first inclination would be to say: is transparency being served? To be honest, I think the government was being fleeced before. It didn’t take much of an effort to say, “Well, jeez, the government is looking for a water truck. How much do they have budgeted? Oh, it’s $180,000, so I better bid $170,000,” and keep on maximizing their bids every single time, in my view, and taking advantage of that. To my mind, that leads to project overruns; that leads to capital projects. When an architect sees that a school is worth $40 million, they design it exactly at $40 million, and of course there are cost overruns.

I think by subtracting those numbers again, although I normally fear transparency being lost, the sum totals will be all rolled together, and each line item will be delivered as sort of a product bunch. I’m very pleased by this approach, because we take doing the tough work out of a competitive

bid process. We take away the low lying fruit from those people who would be bidding on this by us doing the work for them. I’m hoping that in time we’ll start to get more competitive bids, because people actually have to earn and work a little harder for them.

I won’t cite an example, because I don’t want to narrow it down, and I don’t want to put a spotlight on it, but I am aware of an example where the number wasn’t necessarily that public, and there was a competitive process that shone through and gave us an excellent price and certainly will deliver a quality product. To me, in my mind, without the business community, whether it’s people who build and deliver water trucks or those people who design schools or hospitals or whatever, if we are not telling them how much money we’re willing to spend, that makes them sort of sharpen their pencils. They’re going to put in a proposal for the best dollars that they think we can accept. Certainly, that will work in the long haul.

Mr. Chairman, I have one question — I certainly hope it wasn’t asked already — for the Minister at this time. We are on the threshold of a new process that I think will deliver better bids in the long haul, which will deliver better accountability on our fiscal numbers over the long haul. Is there any strategy to create a check and balance system so that maybe in one year or two years there’ll be a review of how our competitive process has worked since we’ve taken out every single line item dollar and sort of bunched it up as one bottom line dollar for each individual department? Will they do a bit of a review to find out if it’s working with this method, that we’ve created a better competitive environment from the territorial perspective?