Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Would the Minister like to bring witnesses into the Chamber?

Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Does the committee agree?

Thank you, committee. Sergeant-at-Arms, please escort the witnesses into the Chamber.

I’d like to ask the Minister to introduce his witnesses.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have with me Margaret Melhorn, deputy minister of Finance, and Sandy Kalgutkar, deputy secretary to the FMB. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister. General comments. Mr. Ramsay, did you have general comments?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’ll just wait until we get to the detail and ask the question on that page. Thanks.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Does the committee agree that we go to detail?

We’ll start on page 5, Education, Culture and Employment, operations expenditures, education and culture, not previously authorized, negative $300,000.

Total department, negative $300,000.

Page 6, Public Works and Services, capital investment expenditures, asset management, not previously authorized, $2.5 million. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I guess at the onset I’m very happy to see the government looking at biomass and the installation of wood pellet heating systems in GNWT facilities in both Hay River and Fort Smith and in other communities around the Northwest Territories. Just a couple of questions, though. I don’t know if the Minister has the answers for me today, but it takes a certain kind of distribution system, storage, you need a truck to deliver the wood pellets on a bigger scale like this. You can’t just buy bags of pellets at the hardware store and expect somebody to throw them in the hopper. I mean, it’s going to take some infrastructure on the ground. Is there a distribution system in both Hay River and Fort Smith? Is there a company in both of those communities that could look after the distribution of the wood pellets? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Minister Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Member is correct; for volumes of this nature we’d be looking at moving to a truck. There are suppliers in both communities, and once, if this money is approved, part of the planning is going to be for the suppliers to be prepared to upgrade their delivery capacity. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank the Minister for that. For the procurement of those services, is it just going to be how we procure other services or is it going to go out to tender or is there only one in each community? I’m thinking it may be a business opportunity for people in both those communities to get into business. I’d like to see a

competitive type of process take place. I’m just wondering if that will happen.

I anticipate that there would be a public process given that they’re both larger communities with potentially more than one supplier.

That’s good. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It’s in regard to these type of projects I think that we have to seriously start implementing these type of projects in high cost communities. No offence to Fort Smith; we’ve made a major capital investment last year in regard to electric heat, putting electric heat in a bunch of public facilities and a lot of infrastructure dollars went into that, and also into the heating systems we see here in Yellowknife, now Hay River, Fort Smith. But I think we have to do something in regard to the high cost communities in the northern part. I mean, the northern part, north of the Arctic Circle. I think it’s important that we start seriously looking at implementing those type of projects. I’d like to ask the Minister when we can see these type of projects, either residual heat or improving our heat systems, in the northern part of the Northwest Territories where there are high costs to maintain public infrastructure in that part of the Northwest Territories.