Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciated the Minister’s general remarks, overview, here. I am happy to see a slight reduction in O and M budget for this department. Just going through it, some of the things that come up for me and I will likely ask questions on later, but some I will pose now in case he chooses to comment on them in his reply, I notice that asset management is one of the first areas of support. That, I assume, includes determining the energy systems that we put into new assets, the energy systems and energy efficiency opportunities. I am just wondering, is there a way of ensuring that there is a continual seeking out of the most efficient technologies to be employed there. I have often found in the past that this government has been quite slow in adopting some of the technologies. We seem to be getting better now. Theirs is a highlighted sensitivity there, but I am wondering what the mechanism is for ensuring that we stay on top of that in a better way than we have in the past.
I am also noticing that we provide a service of supplying fuel for the NWT Power Corporation. I am wondering if the cost of that service is incorporated into the cost of the energy charge by the Power Corporation or whether there is some other arrangement there.
We’ve talked before about deferred maintenance costs, the accumulation we’re facing and it’s noted again here, over $387 million with the added comment that that is expected to increase as the remaining facilities are assessed. So I am naturally wondering what proportion of the facilities we have accessed to date.
The Woodpile Remediation Program, $555,000 this year. I wonder how long this program has existed, what our funding has been in the past. It’s presented here as if this will complete the
inspection and remediation of woodpile foundations across the Territory or it could be interpreted as this is one step towards that. So I am wondering how far along on that we are and I will have other questions related to that as we get to it.
There is quite a list of projects of infrastructure that have adopted the pellet boilers and so on. I am wondering, just to determine the significance of this, whether we are able to take out any tank farms or whether we are making any savings on that magnitude yet. Of course, there will be the significant measure and whether our maintenance costs for those are going down. I will leave it at that for now, Mr. Chair. Thank you.