Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I too am very pleased with some of the reintroduction of some of the settlement maintainers into the communities. One of those positions happens to be in Fort Resolution. I’d like the department to look at the whole issue of apprenticeships. There are 11 apprentices that the Minister indicated in his opening remarks. I think there’s room for more. I think every tradesperson should have an apprentice and that the department could work with the Housing Corporation and MACA to maintain houses, buildings, other infrastructure in the community and use tradesmen to do that and apprentices to work with them. I think it’s got a lot of

long-term benefits, as far as employment goes for educating people, especially at the community levels. I’m thinking of sort like creating a critical mass by putting the Public Works buildings, the Housing Corporation units, and I know that the Housing Corporation do have their own maintainers and so on, but they can’t really afford apprentices, and I’m not sure that this government can really afford apprentices, but I think that we have to bite the bullet at some point and get the apprentices in any event because of the long-term benefits of such actions.

That’s one area that I think maybe it’s not going to be laid out in this budget, but I think that this department could start working towards trying to achieve that. I think there would be enough kids coming out of school and getting ready for trades that, if we’re able to, as some of these apprentices finish their program, putting them into the workforce and, really, this government working as a little bit of a larger unit, I guess, to create a critical mass of work that’s needed in the communities so that these apprentices could complete their programs at the community and regional levels or whatever, ultimately to find employment out there, whether it’s with departments or with private industry.

I’m happy with the way the deferred maintenance, the whole section of deferred maintenance has gone. I’m assuming at this rate we’ll be completed the deferred maintenance that’s currently in the books in about 10 years, which obviously would mean there would be more deferred maintenance issues coming up somewhere between now and then, but I would be curious to know if the government has a plan to address deferred maintenance issues as they come. Like some sort of plan so that there’s no accumulation of deferred maintenance in the future. I think deferred maintenance is an item that cannot be avoided. At some point you do have to replace a furnace and so on and so forth. It’s something that can’t be avoided but it’s something that this department has done a good job of dealing with, a good job of approaching the whole issue of deferred maintenance with their buildings and addressing the issue. It looks like we see a light at the end of the tunnel here and I’m seeing lots of activity in the communities in this area, so that’s very positive.

I think we’re moving in the right direction in the cost of fuel as well. I have a community that has the fuel barged in and two years ago the cost was very, very high. Last year some of the cost came down and the department was able to respond by reducing the cost of the fuel to the communities, and I know the communities appreciated the reduction in fuel costs and trying to level out the costs was very positive. I’m pleased with that.

That’s all I have, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Next on my list, Mr. Yakeleya.

Mr. Chair, I want to add my few comments to the department. I do want to say the maintainer’s position was advertised and filled by a local person in Tulita. I’m very pleased with this program and the other communities that do have it. It’s something that we should continue to look at to expand in other communities. It’s a valuable program. I do want to thank the department for going ahead with this and filling these positions as quickly as possible.

As my colleague Mr. Beaulieu indicated, that the Apprenticeship Program is something that’s very valuable in our small communities and that there is certainly room for more. So I look forward to the department’s plans to see where we’re going to continue to expand and support our young people to get into the trades. As we know, there is a lack of qualified skilled tradespeople in the North and it’s needed so much in our communities, so I continue to support the Apprenticeship Program under the leadership of this department here and certainly look forward to expanding it more.

I do want to talk about the Deferred Maintenance Program. One of the goals is that our department building remain safe and reliable and that the amount of dollars that are going into the Deferred Maintenance Program and also through the energy management initiatives under the Capital Assets Retrofit Fund here. I do want to say that our infrastructure is aging and some of our buildings in and around the Sahtu fall into that category. I make note, for example, in Tulita we have a building that is being used right now by DPW. It’s called the trades shop. It’s quite old and needs to be demolished and a new one needs to be put up. I noted that the Minister has made some notes on this one here and I look forward to seeing where that trade shop would be replaced as quickly as possible, Mr. Chair.

I do want to say the community of Deline is quite pleased with the new aviation fuel tank at the airport. I think there’s quite a bit of interest and that employed a few people at the site similar to the tanks that we received in Fort Good Hope.

Mr. Chair, I wanted to ask if the Minister would make a few comments somewhere in the detailed budget on the Tulita petroleum division office there. The old building there in Tulita needs to be replaced as quickly as possible and I hope that the Minister would show where in the books that this is going to happen. Under the same department of petroleum products, the community resupply, the Bear Lake ice crossing basically increased its weight capacity to 55,000 kilograms. This was a concern for people in Deline, that their fuel might be getting over there late because of the warm weather and the weight of the ice crossing.

Hopefully, there are longer discussions, I guess, long-term views as to how we could rectify this type of concern.

I wanted to add my support to the bandwidth services in our small communities. Education is asking for them. Health is asking for them. Especially with the high cost of health electronic operations now make it more efficient, I could say, in terms of getting the information to the doctors in the larger centres of Yellowknife or Inuvik and we can use the video monitoring and the electronic health records and all that good stuff that goes on with today’s technology. Because, you know, the cost of flying people out for medevacs, certainly that’s still needed, but sometimes it’s good to have someone just go to the health centres and be hooked up to that type of operation so they can get checked out through that avenue. I’ll continue to advocate for the health centres, especially in our smaller communities where doctors and nurses are not visiting them as much as we want them to visit those centres.

I want to ask the Minister some detail later on in terms of the health centre in Norman Wells and the long-term care facility, the plan that we have given our support to have a long-term care facility in the Sahtu and the planning that would go to make that a reality. I appreciate the support from this House and from Cabinet to bring this to fruition. At the same time, I understand that the community health centre is also in the plans. It is desperately needed. It has been one of the priorities of the health board as one health centre that is sort of busting at the seams. I have been in that health centre. It is really cramming and replaces that we have some eye care services or the dental health. It is not adequate. However, I guess today it will do to have our services. We have to put up with some of the overcrowding in that facility. I understand that is in the planning stages. Mr. Chairman, I have wanted to say that to continue to work with the department to see how some of these essential services are being looked after in our small communities. I think the department is being pretty good in working with our small communities. Mahsi cho.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Committee, we are on general comments for Public Works and Services. Seeing no further, I will give the Minister an opportunity to respond. Minister McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank the committee members for the comments that were raised and concerns and issues that they have brought to our attention.

First of all, I will just say briefly that the program that we initiated for settlement maintainers is something that seems to be working quite well. We have been able to fill most of the positions. There is still one position in the community of Wrigley where

there is an outstanding vacancy. We are going back to re-advertise and see if we can find somebody that will fill that void and help us with the maintenance.

The issue that has been brought forward by all Members is around the DCN. There has been, over the years, some concern over the growth. We are seeing growth really move forward progressively. I think it is around 30 percent every year. Our staff is working quite hard. Most of the growth is driven by the schools’ curriculum traffic and some of the health diagnostics data. While it has really placed demand on the bandwidth, there is also a benefit on it, as Mr. Yakeleya has pointed out, that in that work is now transporting critical information which is really in line with health and social services’ priorities. We have looked at options of how to improve the service. We have a new contract that is being looked at. We are looking at ways and we have some options of addressing the demand placed on the system and we are looking at offloading some of the schools, but not all the schools, onto a different, less expensive, local Internet facility. That seems to be working well. For health right now, we have to, because of security reasons, maintain their services on our program. We certainly would like to provide a more detailed briefing to committee at any given time that there is opportunity to do so. This whole area is quite complex and there are a lot of things happening, a lot of positive initiatives that we would like to share with Members.

Mr. Jacobson had raised the issue of the shop in Ulukhaktok. That is something we are looking to address. We are not sure right now on the comment made regarding gas and Northern Stores. That is not something we do at this point. Our program for PPD only operates in communities where there is no local fuel provider and no independent business doing so. We have not had any discussions with Northern Store to provide them with fuel.

The question was raised by MLA Bisaro on infrastructure process change. Our results, after a couple of years now working the system, indicate that is working well. We have seen improvements on cost. We have had more consultation and also we are experiencing a lot better contracts that are made in the schedule that are set out for the contractors. We are not planning to expand our maintenance program to all of the communities as was requested by MLA Bisaro. Right now we are looking at the communities where the volume of work warrants a maintainer and where the challenges are of getting private contractors. In most cases we are using a mix of both maintainers and contractors. It seems to be working well. We are also attracting now, through our consolidation of our utilities, the expenditures. We have better baseline information. We are able to compile that

information. At the current time we are using that information to identify facilities that are using large volumes of fuel or other utilities and allow us to decide where we would invest in either a replacement or an upgrade or an energy-efficient alternate energy heating or things of that nature.

The MLA for Nahendeh had asked about the Wrigley position. Again, I will just state that we had an individual that was interested. It didn’t work out, so we are going to be advertising that position again. He had also asked about the maintenance of our vehicles along with DOT being done with the Department of Transportation. We are using this system in the community of Fort Simpson because we have a mechanic there and it is cost efficient for us to utilize this individual. If we don’t maximize his time, it would be hard to justify his position. We do go outside of the government to private sources once we have overloaded our capacity with our mechanic. We did go out to a standing offer agreement and had no response. At this point, we would like to keep the system in place. We feel we are meeting all of our obligations.

We are also working in our attempt to consolidate maintenance and maximize our efficiencies. We wanted to set up expertise and identify expertise within our own ranks too, work in the area of energy efficiency and that is something that we are working towards. I think we are doing quite well. We have also been asked by MLA Bromley to consider sharing information on some of the findings that we have on some of our best practices. Although we are more than willing to do so, we also have to keep in mind that we have limited resources and it may be something that we can work close... I mean, we do work close with other departments and agencies, but for us to make that as a... For us to act as a resource to everyone is going to be very difficult. We were also asked about expanding the PPD to include pellets. We had initiated a study, we are just about there. We are about 90 percent complete. We should have the results sometime in April for Members for review.

Mr. Chairman, MLA Beaulieu asked about setting a target to have apprentices with all the tradespeople throughout the departments. I guess that is something, I guess, the government should look at seriously. In our department we have a number of positions now, things are working quite well and to expand the program would, of course, be very dependent on available funding and we’ll continue to seek that appropriate investment.

We were also asked about a couple of capital projects in Mr. Yakeleya’s riding regarding a shop and we have done a study that looked at all of our maintenance shops and right now are considering what we can reasonably bring forward in terms of replacements or building new for consideration for the next capital plan, so that is something that we

will be doing over the summer months. He also asked about the Tulita tank farm. Mr. Chairman, that was approved in our capital budget this past fall. It is also the same with the Norman Wells Health Centre. That still falls under the responsibility of the Department of Health, so maybe we can ask the Member to direct his questions to the Department of Health on that front. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you Mr. McLeod. Does committee agree that we have concluded general comments?

Okay. The department’s consideration begins on page 7-7 but we will defer this page until after consideration of detail, so we will get everybody to turn to page 7-8. Page 7-8, Public Works and Services, information item, infrastructure investment summary.

Agreed. Page 7-9, Public Works and Services, information item, revenue summary.

Agreed. Thank you, committee. We will move along to 7-10, Public Works and Services, Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just before we go to 7-10, on 7-9 I am just wondering are the savings that are gathered through the energy-efficient technologies we are using, do they turn into revenues at all? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister McLeod. Thank you Minister McLeod. Mr. Guy.

Thanks, Mr. Guy. So is the intent to eventually... Those disappear into the general revenues then. I assume and I wonder if the intent is to eventually see them reflected here as revenue. Thank you.

We are on page 7-9, Public Works and Services, information item, revenue summary.

Agreed. Moving along to 7-10, Public Works and Services, information item, active positions.

Agreed. The next page for consideration is page 7-12, 7-13, Public Works and Services, activity summary, directorate, operations expenditure summary. Ms. Bisaro.