Thank you, Madam Chair. Thanks to my colleagues for their comments. I will go through them as quickly as I can.

With respect to the Inuvik school, one of the first things I did when I became the Minister, I think it was April 2012, somewhere around there, it was about the time the school was getting ready to open, the Inuvik East Three School there. I saw it as one of the largest projects this government had been working on and I asked the department to do a comprehensive review on that. They have been doing it ongoing throughout the whole process of the build. They have a lot of information pulled together now, but there is still some work to be done on that school. Once the other two schools are torn down, there is still some site remediation and whatnot. So we won’t be concluding a comprehensive review of that project until it’s done, until that last bit of land work and whatnot has been done.

A lot of work has been done to monitor the process, to collect the data, the budget information, how we did the whole capital planning on that. There will be something to share with Members, once we have completed the post-mortem.

Two Members talked about the office building in Yellowknife. The project is on budget and on time. It is in a slowdown right now. Nothing is happening on it right now. We did a bunch of the cement foundation work prior to the dead of winter setting in. It does go over multiple years, but we have a contract for the build, and we expect the project to come in on time, on budget. Right now we are expecting to have the majority of the build done in… The completion of the base and building construction is scheduled for November 2014. We expect to hit that target. Completion of tenant improvements and ready to move will be April 2015. The budget includes both of those things.

Another one of my colleagues, Mr. Bouchard, talked about the vacancy rates in Yellowknife and the concerns about the new building. I would be happy to share the comprehensive report that was prepared in the 16th Assembly talking about

vacancy in the capital. We are still confident that that information is going to hold true. We have already seen some of that start to take place. At the end of the day, the building is going to save us $100 million over the life of the building that we can roll into programs and services for different areas of the Northwest Territories. Right now we are confident that it’s going to be as is outlined in that report.

Deferred maintenance was another question that was raised. Deferred maintenance is the practice of postponing prudent or non-essential maintenance activities to capital assets as a result of a shortfall in any given fiscal year’s budget. If we go back in history in time a long way, prior to the life of this government, prior to the life of the previous government, even prior to the government before that, there were a lot of midlife retrofits that weren’t being done by the government due to financial resources. As a result, a lot of the buildings ended up not being in as good a shape as they would have been had we done a proper midlife retrofit on them. That’s one of the main reasons that our deferred maintenance is so high.

We continue to pound away at it, we continue to do work. We do our risk assessments on the different assets that we have to determine what needs to be done now, in order to extend the life of a building. But at the same time, my colleague Mr. Bromley wondered how, with an $8 million investment, did we drop deferred maintenance from $470 million to $290 million in this fiscal year coming up and we’re tearing down a couple of buildings, we’re tearing down Samuel Hearne, we’re tearing down SAMS, we’re also shutting down the Blueberry Patch in Inuvik. By shutting down these assets or tearing them down, a significant amount of the deferred maintenance is gone. Oh, and we completed Diamond Jenness, which was also part of the deferred maintenance, but by finishing that school, we’re going to have significantly less costs in the deferred maintenance area.

So by doing those things, by doing our risk assessment, by determining what assets can be fixed and then fixing them or which ones need minor things, we’re able to bring some of that down. So that $8 million may seem small, but between that and the other things that are happening, we’re seeing a pretty significant drop in deferred maintenance this year.

Some other areas, we took over utilities and the Member asked how that’s helping us reduce costs. There’s a number of different ways that taking over the utilities has been helping us to reduce costs, because we’re able to purchase more things in a bulk situation. The department has real familiarity with the technology that’s out there that some departments may not have who are responsible for it on themselves. So by having it located, we’re

learning about best practices within government ourselves. We’re learning what’s working over there, we’re learning what’s working in different departments and we’re able to bring that information all together. We’re also learning where things like pellets and other heating systems could be utilized effectively and efficiently. Obviously, we’d like to continue to have successes in there. We’d like to have greater successes.

Another thing that we can do as a government that we weren’t doing great, I think, when this was a unique responsibility of different departments, is we’re able to track consumption, we’re able to evaluate the buildings more thoroughly for energy consumption and put that sort of in a central brain trust, if you will, that is able to compare it to other areas. So it’s about learning the information that’s out there, making sure that the right people are looking at it and reviewing it. We have three years of data now which we didn’t have before. So although the Member asked for some specifics on numbers about what our total emissions are, I don’t have that information at my fingertips, but I will get that information for the Member and committee.

The Green Procurement Policy, the Member said he didn’t want to hear again that we’re working on it, but we’re working on it. I see a real opportunity coming to actually have some real progress in this area and that’s going to come with the procurement of shared services. Right now so many things are happening all over the place and we think that this is going to be an opportunity to actually get some real headway on it. We’ve got information, but when we bring it all together, we think we can make some progress and I’m going to keep my eye on that one. I know the Member will be as well.

The Member talked about some contracting policies, and our sole-source and our standing offer agreements. There have been challenges with standing offer agreements, there’s no question. In some areas of government they work really well, other areas of government they’re not working particularly well. There have been some situations in Yellowknife recently where a number of people were concerned with, let’s say, the video production standing offer agreements. We’ve had a sit down with the individuals that are affected to get their side, their input on what wasn’t working and what needs to be fixed. The comptroller general is doing a comprehensive review of standing offer agreements and how these things roll out and then, when they come into a shared procurement, we’re going to be able to apply more consistent standards and application across the Government of the Northwest Territories. So there are challenges there, but I believe we’re getting them done and we’re engaging with our clientele, the contractors out there that are utilizing them to get good, solid information on how we can prove those standing

offer agreements and other opportunities that exist for us.

Mr. Moses asked some questions about contracting and change orders. In particular with the school in Inuvik, we have a contract for the teardown of the Samuel Hearne School right now, and we believe there’s sufficient budget to cover the cost of the contract and any change orders that may come in. I don’t believe there will be any supp appropriations for this project. I know there’s going to be some specifics. So maybe I’ll leave them for detail.

The next couple of questions were from Mr. Yakeleya and they were on deferred maintenance. I think I’ve addressed those already in how we prioritize them. With respect to some of the challenges of Norman Wells and the natural gas situation, in addition to working with our partners in ENR and ITI in the community, we are making some changes in the community itself, which will help us get some of our assets off of gas, which means that it would put less of a demand on the community. For instance, the school and the airport we’re planning to change over to pellets. The new health centre and long-term care facility that will be built in Norman Wells, the primary source of heat will also be pellets. I think those things are a step in the right direction. It goes to keeping our footprint down and helping us control costs, and not making or creating additional reliance on gas, which may or may not be available.

The Public Works garage in Tulita, it’s in our needs plan. I hear what the Member is saying and I will have further discussions with my department on that to try and address those concerns. With procurement I’ve already talked to some degree on some of the changes that are happening, the comptroller general review of contracting policies and procedures in the government, and we are going to be bringing a shared procurement services into the Government of the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Madam Chair.