Thank you, Madam Chair. I, too, just have some short comments about Public Works and Services’ operating budget.

I think one of the first things that struck me, becoming a new MLA, is the issue of deferred maintenance, and learning more about that and finding out that we’re so far behind in our maintenance programs that we actually don’t have any kind of a plan to get back into just a regular maintenance. Everything’s deferred maintenance. I

know the department has been able to depreciate that amount. I’m just wondering if I can get details on where the department assesses our deferred costs are at this current time. I know they were at, I think, $470 million, and they were down to $375 million, I think, before. I’m just wondering if the department can provide that kind of information on the deferred maintenance.

The problem with deferred maintenance is, obviously, we’re not putting maintenance into some of these buildings that we’re currently even building. I’ve heard that there are actually costs to our capital costs for this, because if you’re not maintaining buildings, buildings don’t last as long. Buildings that typically should last us 25, 30 years are only lasting us 18, 20 years, 22 years, because we’re not maintaining them as often as we’re supposed to be. Then we have to replace them, capital-wise, more often. The numbers and the cost of this deferred maintenance is just overwhelming, and I’m just wondering if the department, at some time in the near future, will have some sort of plan in place to get rid of deferred maintenance to be able to say that this is the end of the tunnel, we’re going to catch up here by putting in an extra $75 million a year or $50 million a year into deferred maintenance so that in some point in time we can say, even if it’s 10 years down the road, we know that we’re going to be caught up.

Obviously, I am happy to see the new lease manager position in Hay River. I think that’s something that’s going to help the South Slave as far as the implementation of leases. I, too, would also like to see an update on where the YK office building is at. First coming into the Legislative Assembly and seeing that this is on the budget, it would be nice to see what’s happening with that. I have some major concerns in the fact that I think the reason that it was built for market economies and stuff like that, I think it’s going to cause a vacancy that that’s going to create once we build that building and vacate some of the downtown. I think there’s going to be a lot of private owners that own buildings that are going to have complaints about the government basically affecting the markets that way. Especially with devolution and the federal government doing cutbacks, I think you’re going to see some downtown core of Yellowknife see some vacancy and we’re going to have to deal with those issues.

My concern is that when those demands come up that they’re going to want the government to invest more in the downtown core and maybe even fill them with positions. One of my mandates here is to make sure that we get jobs out to the regions and out to the small communities, and I’m just concerned that this building kind of defeats that purpose. That’s definitely an issue I have. Those are all my general comments right now.