Agreed. Moving on to page 5-7, Public Works and Services, activity summary, Technology Services Centre, infrastructure investment summary, total infrastructure investment summary, $7.042 million. Agreed?

Agreed. Page 5-10, Public Works and Services, petroleum products division, activity summary, infrastructure investment summary, total infrastructure investment summary, $1.265 million.

Okay, Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I can’t help but make my perennial comment here. This commitment, obviously, I think to date we’ve spent somewhere in the order of $9 million looking after our tank farms and there are new federal regulations requiring additional monitoring equipment and fairly expensive equipment and so on. Of course, we have these tank farms in many of our communities. Again, I hope that this is brought into the accounting equation when we consider other energy infrastructure; for example, the Biomass Strategy implementation, should we get around to that when talking about what we should be spending money on and what we shouldn’t be.This is a very expensive approach and something that’s been avoided big time by Nordic countries. There’s no reason in the world why we can’t avoid these costs and shift the resources, the millions and

millions of dollars we’re putting into this, to much better priorities for our people. Just by way of a comment. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister of Finance, did you want to respond to the comment?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Over the long term we all agree we want to get in the same place. We recognize that we’re in a time of transition. The Nordic countries, to be sure, have advanced their case much faster over the generations than we have. But as we look at the significant $60 million investment to alternative energy that we are putting out there with a plan with biomass and all these other areas for alternative energy, we must recognize that we still have to maintain the current infrastructure as we transition to a different type of energy generation and, hopefully, distribution. Thank you.

I appreciate those comments from the Minister. I didn’t want to ignore completely, either, the efforts we are making in another division here, asset management, which we approved, but during which we’re making significant investments with very reasonable payback times, and I think those are good investments. Those are showing the payback times and whatnot. I think we had some 40 projects in that area. I’m very supportive of getting that work done. There’s at least another 400 of those that we could all come up with, should the resources permit. So I’m very supportive of that approach. Thank you.

We appreciate the support from the Member on these efforts. Thank you.

Page 5-10, Public Works and Services, activity summary, petroleum products division, infrastructure. Mr. Yakeleya.

Mr. Chair, just a question to the Minister in terms of the Tulita tank farm and shelter that they use. The Minister has written to me, I’ve received some good correspondence in terms of the future plans for the shelter or the shack that we have in Tulita for handling the fuel in our community. I’m just trying to get a sense, I know it’s been delayed and I wanted to ask the Minister in terms of the next couple years before you start putting the real building in there, in between there are some safety mechanisms we should be looking at in terms of the quality of this building in terms of performing its function as a place that we sell products such as the petroleum, diesel and gas in the community. Can the Minister indicate as to what type of measurements would be taken to ensure that this building is in good shape and we don’t get any more complaints from our people in the community that are selling fuel?

Minister of Public Works, Mr. McLeod.

Mr. Chairman, we have had correspondence back and forth on this issue. The Member has raised concern regarding the condition of this operator’s shelter in one of his communities and we have indicated to him that we’d be making some minor upgrades to ensure that the building continues to be useful and viable. This project is in our plans, in our five-year capital needs, and is scheduled to begin in 2011. So we’re very reluctant to invest a whole lot of money as this building is going to be replaced very quickly. Thank you.

Public Works and Services, activity summary, petroleum products division, infrastructure investment summary, total infrastructure investment summary, $1.265 million.

Agreed. Okay, you can return back to department summary, page 5-2. Department of Public Works and Services, department summary, infrastructure investment summary, total infrastructure investment summary, $27.260 million.

Agreed. Does the committee agree that we’ve concluded the Department of Public Works and Services?

Agreed. With that, I’d like to thank the Minister and thank the witnesses. What is the wish of the committee? Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Committee wishes to go on to the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs.

Is committee agreed?