Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks to all the Members for their comments and the issues they’ve brought forward.
The first one being, of course, the discussion around some of the demolition projects we have going. We have a budget of $3.2 million to take down two fairly large buildings; buildings that we’re still paying for the safety issues on them. That’s a big reason to move forward in fairly short order to eliminate any of the public safety concerns. There are also contaminants in some of these facilities that we have to make sure we deal with. There is still a certain cost to have all those things ongoing for the long term while we have new buildings that have replaced them. There has been a lot of interest from both communities to do salvage type operations and we need to have that discussion, but it’s also an opportunity for many of the community members to have some employment as a result of this.
I also appreciate the comments on consolidation of the utilities. I certainly appreciate the support. It will allow us to better track and provide a better service across the North as we take on this responsibility.
With the building maintainers we also think that’s something that’s important. We’ve had a lot of challenges over the years to ensure some of the communities, not all of the communities, but to have some of the services provided to the communities. A lot of times it’s very expensive for our contractors to fly in from the larger centres, especially if the maintenance problem is very small. We’ve had, also, problems trying to recruit contractors in some of these small communities. We feel that having a permanent presence in the communities that we’ve mentioned is something that we need to do. We will be working towards improving the skill levels of the people we hire. We’re anticipating that they will have a certain level of skills to start with and start providing training and building operations that will help enhance their abilities and provide a quality service to all the communities in terms of government facilities.
The office space in Yellowknife is something that’s been recommended for us to move on. It’s certainly a mechanism that would allow us to save some money. It’s also an opportunity for us to balance our portfolio. Right now we have in some of the jurisdictions in the Northwest Territories an imbalance of having more leases or a very large amount of leases versus buildings that we own. In this case we anticipate that the savings over the life of this facility will be in excess of $100 million.
We also recognize that we have a responsibility in the area of public petroleum projects to continue moving towards finding alternate ways to provide support. We need to be able to switch to something that will provide the same level of service at a cheaper cost and with less impact to the environment. We will continue to explore that.
We have, with this department, converted a number of buildings. There are five buildings so far that
we’ve converted over to biomass. We are working on eight other buildings that are under development right now for conversion and we’d like to do eight more in the next little while. So there’s quite a bit being done there.
The other thing that was raised by Mr. Yakeleya is the facility that is being considered for demolition in his community. We certainly agree that there is a huge demand for the property that both the Chief Albert Wright building, or the school that’s in his community, for the land that it sits on. Same for the Deh Cho Hall. It’s on prime property that needs to be opened up and we recognize that.
I don’t agree with Mr. Yakeleya that his Tulita garage was built in the 1600s. I would agree that it is old and it needs some consideration. As we move forward with our new maintenance positions in the communities, we also have to consider the support in terms of facilities and offices and shops for them to work out of. So we are developing a plan to deal with that. So there are going to be a number of facilities that are going to require upgrades. There are a number of them that are going to require retrofits and a number that are going to be outright replaced. So once we have that done, we’d be very pleased to share that with the Members.
The Tulita tank farm, we recognize there’s a facility there that is requiring some consideration for replacement. We are looking at the whole project, all of the tank farm, and it’s something that we want to look at replacing. So that will deal with the issue that Mr. Yakeleya has raised. Right now we’re at the planning study stage, so we should be able to have that down the road as we move forward.
We also, of course, have to agree with Mr. Beaulieu when he’s pointed out that there are a number of good reasons for consolidating the utilities and it will allow us to reduce costs. We recognize that. It will certainly allow us to have more control as we now can start tracking what facilities are ineffective or utilizing more energy than they should. So it’s certainly something that we look forward to doing. I think it’s something that having a centralized system such as what we’re proposing will help us enhance our responsibilities where the community is government.
We also, I think, had talked some time ago, during the last budget process, about our plans to continue to look at different communities for maintenance personnel. Lutselk'e will be one that we’ll consider down the road. They had a position historically and that position was removed. We have to, for the next go-round, start identifying if there’s still a need in some communities. We already recognize that there are some that we’ll probably need to start moving on. That assessment will be made down the road.
Mr. Chairman, we’re also glad to hear that Mr. Hawkins supports consolidation of the utilities. We will be tracking, as he’s raised concerns about doing things better, and it will allow us to track every asset and will allow us to report to the communities or to the people that are operating the asset. We still have to point out, though, that each department has a responsibility in this area for managing their energy, but we will be able to tell if there’s a huge use or over more than what we think was required. So tracking and monitoring will be a lot better with better control.
On the issue of the TSC that was raised by Mr. Hawkins, we certainly agree. We have to stay on top of the technology that’s coming out and it’s changing fairly rapidly. The use of Skype is something that we need to take a look at. We are looking at new contracts in the next while and we have to look at all options, so that will be a consideration as we move forward to that stage. So we will be considering that. That’s all I have, Mr. Chairman, Thank you.