Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As indicated in my opening comments, we are taking over health leases in the Northwest Territories. It’s a significant amount of lease space and responsibility.

So that’s where this would appear. I appreciate that. What proportion of this would that constitute?

I’ll go to the deputy minister as he’s got the information right in front of him.

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Mr. Guy.

Thank you, Mr. Guy. Page 7-17, Public Works and Services, activity summary, asset management, operations expenditure summary, $92.341 million. Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Under asset management we have done some consolidating on the payment of the energy bills in coordination, and at one time the philosophy used to be that departments should be farmed out and be responsible for their own things like, for example, their power bill or their fuel bill and they best would know how to manage these things and coordinate these things. Since the last couple of years, Public Works and Services has taken this back. I’m curious as to how the monitoring and management of this program now has been working out. Has there been cost savings? Better organization? Better payment on time? More efficiencies? What works well and what could work better?

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We’ve talked previously already about some of the things that we do under here that we can do as a central point as opposed to being done by the departments to give a complete sense of utilization within the Government of the Northwest Territories. Things like the energy consumption analysis and benchmarking, detailed energy audits, inspections of electrical and mechanical systems that are under our responsibility. I think we have been able to get a better sense of our usage of energy and I think we’ve had an opportunity, through things like CARF, to address some of our challenges out there to help us reduce and control costs. There are some specifics I’d like to go to the deputy for.

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Mr. Guy.

Thank you, Mr. Guy. Mr. Hawkins.

Who is responsible for these specific bills on these energy costs? Which departmental budget do they come from that cover the actual payments?

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It’s in the budget of Public Works and Services.

Is there a chargeback in any way to the individual departments?

No, we manage and operate the buildings and cover the costs.

So if consumption increases then process therefore would increase. I haven’t seen any energy bills get cheaper to use. Who is responsible for any spike in usage? I guess it’s around stewardship. If Public Works and Services has become the department that picks up the bills but say Education runs all their buildings lights on, whatever, it seems like the responsibility is out of touch with those who, they’re not connecting. How do you manage that problem?

We’re responsible for the lifecycle, the maintenance, the ongoing

monitoring of the buildings. We do the maintenance on boilers and whatnot where the buildings are our responsibility. We’re responsible for the general upkeep on the buildings that we own. We can track and monitor that stuff. If we’ve noticed a spike, we would certainly explore that and try to determine what was the cause of the spike, whether it was a system-related spike or whether it was an operations-related spike. If there’s an operations-related spike we could certainly talk to a department to figure out what’s going on to cause a spike. Some of them may be required. Some of them may be operational. So we would pay those bills.

I’m just trying to provide probably not the perfect example but say everyone decides that they want to start leaving the lights on at the Lahm Ridge Tower every night and that’s not a Public Works and Services building. They’re located somewhere else. I think it’s by and large a Transportation and Education type building. More of a directorate-level style as opposed to an operation. If people started leaving lights on late at night, not turning off computers, who becomes responsible? I’m trying to get the link between some responsibility for stewardship of the cost of the power versus those who end up picking up the tab regardless of what it is.

It may not be the best example because that is a leased building not an owned and operated building. If the property manager or the owner of the building were to come to us indicating that the power bills were going up, we would certainly deal with that through property management and talk to the department to get a sense of why the cost is so high. I think normally that’s how we would deal with that situation.

For owned and operated buildings we would have those discussions with the department. Many of our buildings have controls on them so that we can actually turn off lights at certain hours and make sure everything is shut down. We’ve also got other contracts with people doing cleaning and whatnot who will go around and turn off the lights before they leave the building. Lots of mechanisms to deal with some of those things.

Staying away from dollar value because it doesn’t really work on power bills or, for example, oil bills. It’s rather to start on a consumption level analysis, that way you know what is considered a baseline of fairness, because those other things change. They fluctuate. Does Public Works and Services set any communication tools up based on consumption levels based of these types of consumables that Public Works and Services at the end of the day picks up the bill for and the responsibilities held within the department has actually been taken away? Does Public Works

and Services have any type of communication framework that does this?

Maybe if I can get the Member to explain that a little more clearly. I’m not sure I fully understand what he’s asking.

By way of example, if a school uses more than – I know they use more than 1,000 kilowatts, by the way, if a school used 1,000 kilowatts a month and all of a sudden they’re using 1,200 kilowatts a month, and we all know this is a ridiculous example in the sense of scale, but the point is, what is considered the stewardship and relationship built on consumption? If I said their power bill went up to $1,000 and it’s now $1,200, well, that could be because the power rate has changed, but the consumption may have stayed the same. It’s not fair to tackle the dollar amount but it’s consistent to challenge the consumption rate.

Back to the consumption, if they use 1,000 kilowatts a month typically on average and all of a sudden they’re starting to use 1,200 kilowatts, what type of link is built in their communication strategy and what type of tools do we have to get the school to say wait a minute, we have to figure out how we’re using power and why we’re using power? There may be a perfectly valid reason, but at the same time, someone has to be responsible for usage. It’s bread and butter economics or, I often say, kitchen table economics.