Mahsi. Again, it is at the Beaufort-Delta Education Council level. Again, we provide funding to them to provide teachers to the students. We provide operation maintenance to operate the schools, to look after the students based on enrolments. That’s what our funding is based on and if the students happen to drop out of school for some reason, then it is the responsibility of the Beaufort-Delta because the funding is allocated to their board to deal with those matters at hand. As the Minister responsible, I am responsible to make sure the act is in place where the board of education is following the act. So, Mr. Speaker, when it comes to hiring teachers, it is at the board level. Mahsi.

Thank you. The Minister stated yesterday that the information he had was accurate and from the superintendent. This does not seem to add up, Mr. Speaker. Can the Minister explain what was he trying to accomplish by stating these things yesterday that just didn’t make sense? Thank you.

Mahsi. With this outcome, we can certainly clarify what’s truly happening. It’s just a matter of making calls to the superintendent or the board level and reconfirm where the students are at, but at the same time, the Member is asking for an additional teacher in the community to what was required based on their funding. It will be at the board level to deal with those eight students that have been brought forward to our attention. Mr. Speaker, yes, we will clarify the matter once and for all. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Your final supplementary, Mr. Jacobson.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to ask the Minister if he could share that information that he did read out yesterday to me in the House in regards to the stats or where he got that information from and that the Beaufort-Delta education, Mr. Roy Cole, the Beaufort-Delta education superintendent says nothing has changed, Mr. Speaker. I want to get to the bottom of this, I want to work with the Minister and his department to make sure everything gets properly allocated for these eight students that supposedly nothing has changed. Thank you.

That is exactly what we’ll get out of the Beaufort-Delta Education Council. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Minister of Transportation and I’d like to thank both the Minister of Transportation and Finance for the

package of information on the Deh Cho Bridge that we received the other day. It was comprehensive and there was a lot of information in there, which Members have been asking for.

I spoke about the bridge last week and in my statement I asked for two things. I asked for an analysis of the costs, how they were accumulated from inception until now, and I also asked for protocols for the future. My first question to the Minister is in regard to the bridge project’s estimates and the costs to date information that was contained in the package of information we got the other day. I didn’t see any obvious reference in either of those two items to what I called “hidden costs” in my statement, and by that I mean the work that’s been done by GNWT staff, the Department of Transportation, Department of Justice, Department of Finance. So I’d like to ask the Minister where do those costs show up in this summary that we received the other day. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The honourable Minister responsible for Transportation, Mr. Michael McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The costs that were incurred by our government that were not directly charged back to the project I’m assuming is what the Member is referring to. Those are one full-time position and another part-time position and, of course, there are other people within our government that have worked on this project. Those costs are not included, as the Member stated, as part of this budget. Those costs are outside of the project costs. These are all calculations that would be charged back to the project and we don’t charge back our staff positions to the project at this point. So it won’t be included as part of the estimations.

Thank you. That goes to my point, when I call them “hidden costs” I was not impugning that anyone was hiding anything, but these are costs which are not all that easy to itemize. The two PYs, yes, they’re obvious, but then there are many other bits and pieces of costs in various departments and that’s what I’m talking about. I’d like to know if the Minister can tell me approximately what kinds of costs the GNWT is incurring for staff time that’s been spent on this project, and that would be from after October 2007 election until now. Thank you.

Thank you. I suppose we could calculate that. That’s not something we normally do on our project is divide a person’s time up into how many projects he’s got and assign a cost to those specific projects. This is a normal course of duty. We can certainly try to get some calculations together. It would entail some effort. We have a lot of people that may have worked on one portion or another on this project, but we can certainly have a discussion to see if we can get that

together in a fairly short order, if that’s what’s being requested. Thank you.

Thanks to the Minister. I do appreciate the commitment. That is what I’m asking for, is some kind of an approximation of costs which GNWT has had to endure for this project over and above the actual costs of the construction and the management of the project. So I am looking forward to that information.

My next question has to do with chargeback and the Minister has mentioned that many costs are charged to the project. These GNWT staff costs I presume are not charged to the project and I’d like him to confirm. I understood that the $15 million we just approved is going to be paid back to GNWT through tolls. Will these GNWT staff costs also be paid back to GNWT through tolls over time? Thank you.

We don’t have any projects that we charge back government services. The people that are working on these projects are hired to do those jobs and, no, they’re not included in the toll recovery. The $15 million does not include the two positions or the position and a half and things of that nature that are right now part of regular duties. So I guess the short answer to the Member is no, it’s not included in the $15 million. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Your final supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.

Thanks, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister for that clarification. So I guess I have to then ask, this is a P3 project, you know, the cost for the project is now $181-some-million, but is it normal that in a P3 project that the public partner is going to encounter and endure and have to undertake extra costs over and above the actual cost of the project? Thank you.

There’s a P3 arrangement in this case and, yes, there are responsibilities assigned to different partners. In this case, we did charge back a lot of what the government has to have incurred, including all the different components of responsibility, but the two people that we have assigned are a position and a half that we have assigned directly to this position. We have not included and we did not agree anywhere in the concession agreement that we would charge it back. That’s the rationale for why we’re doing it the way we are. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This whole initiative going into year two is a major undertaking. We recognize that the Biomass Strategy is at a high level and as we work through our various energy plans, as we review and redo our Greenhouse Gas Strategy, as we look at all the other components of our Energy Strategy, that the debate and decision-making that’s going to take place with regard to standards and targets is going to flow from that. Thank you.

That’s kind of my concern. We’re three years almost into our mandate here and yet we’ve got a lot of debate to go before we actually do things. So I’m pretty concerned here. The Minister notes, as anybody could have noted in this strategy, that cross-departmental efforts are needed, but again there is no mechanism for merging community engagement which is called for with private enterprise and Public Works and Services’ considerable experience now in a pilot test approach to distribute a biomass energy project in each region. So I’m wondering what is the mechanism for that. There is no indication. It’s a lot of work and hopefully the thinking has been done, but what is just that one mechanism for getting that going? Thank you.

In case I hadn’t mentioned it, we are committing $60 million to this initiative. We finished year one. We are moving into year two. We are committed to community energy plans. We are also working very closely with all the other strategies within government. We are looking at government itself doing a significant number of retrofits. We are growing the market with biomass, with our efforts, with the communities, within government retrofits, within the private sector. We’ve also started discussions and planning in terms of inventory to see what type of biomass industry could be sustainable and what’s the best structure for that; is it regional or should it be territorial? So I would

suggest, Mr. Speaker, that we have a lot of pieces on this chessboard and a lot of them are in play and there’s a lot of work being done and there is $60 million of government money being put to this initiative to move it all forward. Thank you.

I’m glad there is a lot of work being done and I’m glad to hear that assurance. I’m just trying to pull out some of that work here, Mr. Speaker. I know the Minister realizes, from his comments, that it’s an enormous task, but I’m trying to get at how far along are we at all. What is the quantity and the volumes of things we are talking about? How many furnaces do we need to change over and where are those targets to be established? So what work is actually underway to get down to the brass tacks on what the specifics are on this challenge and its opportunities? Thank you.