Thank you, committee. Sergeant-at-Arms, if you could please escort the witnesses into the Chamber. Thank you.

Mr. Beaulieu, if you would be kind enough to introduce your witnesses to the Chamber, please. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To my left is the deputy minister of Public Works and Services, Paul Guy; and to my right, director of TSC, Laurie Gault.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. Mr. Guy, Ms. Gault, thank you for joining us this evening. Committee, as agreed upon earlier, there will be no opening comments. We will go directly into general comments. General comments, Public Works and Services. Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. My comments will focus on the deferred maintenance. As the Minister of Finance indicated to us earlier through his presentation to the Members, we have a huge deficit with the infrastructure in the Northwest Territories in the billions of dollars. We are doing our best to maintain that percentage of power, we are increasing to lower our deficit and it is the aging of our infrastructure.

Has the Minister, along with his colleagues, looked at the other options to look at reducing the amount of deficit we have? I think we are in the billions of dollars. This government here is strapped, cash tight with the amount of money that we received through the Territorial Funding Formula with the Government of the Northwest Territories, and we’re doing the best we can. I know there are also other options to look at how do we maintain our assets through a P3 concept. The shortage of cash that we have, are there other avenues of building, design build kind of a concept that we don’t put up our

cash upfront so that we can build buildings and we can turn around and lease them back from the companies through not having to have all this cash upfront to start construction in our small communities?

I talk about one of the old buildings in Tulita, the DPW garage. It has been there since the ‘60s. It is actually a federal government asset and it is sitting there. It’s no different than the garage that we have at the Yellowknife Airport. Now they have a new building and garage there. Has that building at the Yellowknife Airport been deemed unfit or overcrowded and for all the reasons we should get a new airport garage in Yellowknife here? We have those types of situations in our communities. I’m just asking again for the one in Tulita.

I guessed the deferred maintenance, we are doing the best that we can and working on how we reduce, I guess, through a list of priorities and what can be done to look at the one in Tulita as a priority. I haven’t yet seen anything done in the last three years.

The other one I want to talk about is the Public Works shop replacement, and I’m very happy to see this within the capital for 2015-16 in Norman Wells. I know that there is some high interest from some of the members in my region, especially in Norman Wells, as to this shop here. Look at some of the concepts of this whole infrastructure. Should this be a successful project starting on time, within budget and completing on time, we want to look at this concept, because I remember Mr. Danny Gaudet along with other members from Deline talking to Mr. Miltenberger and some other Members and maybe even yourself, Mr. Minister, that we can look at this concept in Deline. This was talked about four or five years ago. Putting a one-stop shop facility in our small communities where everybody could take advantage, even help the education with having a trade centre there, so that high school students could go there and learn a specific trade and earn credits using the concept of pooling our resources together in a small community. That is what Deline has been asking for the last eight or so years. Let’s look at this. I know this is one aspect of how do we save money and prove our efficiencies of our expenditures when you are looking at these types of designs across the Northwest Territories. I’m happy that the one is being looked at in Norman Wells. Those are my comments on this issue.

Mr. Chair, the Minister is looking at these types of shop replacements, and if it is possible, we would like to learn from that and use that in other communities such as Deline and probably other communities in the Northwest Territories. I think that is a good possibility in helping each department out.

I will leave you with that as my comments and look forward to working with the Minister through his budget here.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The deferred maintenance budget of $5 million is in the capital and we also have $3 million in O and M in deferred maintenance, as the Members are aware. The infrastructure deficit is impacted a bit by deferred maintenance. Deferred maintenance essentially is on infrastructure that is already in place; however, it prevents that from becoming infrastructure deficit by us doing midlife work. Also, when there is time for items that have been deferred, that is the program for deferred, then we then do the work on the building. So we have been able to reduce our deferred maintenance from $470 million in 2007-08 to $290 million currently. So we have worked towards, I guess in a sense we are reducing the infrastructure deficit.

The shop in Norman Wells, for us, is something positive. We are working with the Department of Lands to build a shop that we are both going to use. We both gain from working together. We are using a piece of land that was transferred, actually an asset that was transferred over by the federal government that was beyond the use, it was not a safe building to use. The federal government is going to demolish the building and remediate the site and it will be then transferred to Lands. So that land will become available, essentially leaving the Lands without a shop in Norman Wells. We have been talking to that department and there will be a joint shop built there, so that’s something that we’ll benefit from. Lands will not use their building all the time. It’s going to be to store some equipment for parts of the year.

In Deline that concept has been presented to us by the community governments. Their wish is that ourselves work with the local hamlet, the local housing authority and also Environment and Natural Resources to build a joint multi-use facility, multi-use warehouse, shop, so that is something that we are continuing to discuss. Our plan for Deline, I believe, is quite a ways out. We are looking at the scheduling of all our warehouses that need to be replaced, and that comes in down the road at 2021-22. This is something that we need to discuss with the other departments that may have an earlier need, and if we can have economies of scale and it will allow us to move that number closer to now, we may be able to do that.

I like the idea that shops such as these could be used in schools where they don’t have the technical program in the schools and so on. Again, that’s something that I would be prepared to have discussions with the Minister of Education that

could eventually lead to discussions between ourselves and the various education authorities.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Continuing on with general comments, I have Mr. Bouchard.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. My comments for this department, I guess if I can get a little more detail on the deferred maintenance. I know it’s been going down annually, what those numbers are, and do we have any kind of projections on where that’s going? Are we seeing some of those numbers going to be increasing over the next few years, or are we getting rid of some of those assets that actually are probably… I’m thinking we’ve got some older buildings that, actually, if we get rid of some of those older buildings it will drop dramatically, but I know that those numbers have been going down, so that’s a good thing.

The only other question I had was basically how much biomass are we implementing. I know Public Works and Services does most of the implementing of any kind of upgrades to facilities. Some of them might be in the capital budgets from our other departments, but I guess, what is the overall strategy of that biomass review? Are we continuing to add more and more biomass? Are we just about maxed out to the amount of biomass that we’re going to be doing? I guess, what’s the strategy going forward on biomass? I’d like to get an update on that.

Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On the deferred maintenance, yes, when an asset is sold and no longer is usable, it’s beyond economical repair, then we replace it. At the point we replace it our deferred maintenance does drop, but we would immediately start to accumulate deferred maintenance on a new building. So, slowly, if we’re able to renew our buildings for the most part, then we would continue to chip away at the deferred maintenance but we could never get the deferred maintenance right down to nothing, as an example. As soon as a building is new and is introduced as an asset for the Government of the Northwest Territories, deferred maintenance starts to accumulate.

I would like to have the deputy minister respond to the biomass for some more detail.

Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. Mr. Guy.

Thank you, Mr. Guy. Mr. Bouchard.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The follow-up of deferred maintenance, and I think the deferred maintenance was a lot worse, especially when we started this Assembly, but do we still feel that deferred maintenance is a strong issue. Is it an issue that’s actually costing us?

The new buildings we’re doing, like the Minister indicated, as soon as we build a new building we have deferred maintenance, so are we getting the value out of our new buildings that we’re building? Because of the volume of our deferred maintenance, is that life of those buildings getting less and less? Are we seeing that we used to need every 25 years a midlife retrofit but because of deferred maintenance that we have, the load that we currently have, are we seeing that we need that every 20 years? I guess, what kind of impact does that deferred maintenance on the assets that we currently have and the assets that we’re bringing forward today?

Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. Mr. Guy.

Thank you, Mr. Guy. Continuing on with general comments, I have Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. As we work with Public Works and Services here just reviewing the much needed Public Works and Services shop replacement here in Fort Simpson and centralizing the carpentry, plumbing and electrical trade space, a couple of questions. In the document here it says shop replacement 2016-17. I just wonder if that’s a typo at all. Most particularly, we’re reviewing capital estimates for 2015-16.

When the Minister is responding, I’m presuming, as well, that he’ll be accessing the biomass steam heating plant for heating the new shop building as well.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Minister Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The majority of the budget for the capital cost for the new shop in Fort Simpson is slated for 2015-16. We have spent some money already on that capital project and there will be some money spent in 2016-17, as well, but as I indicated, the majority of it will be in this fiscal year that we’re talking about today. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. Mr. Menicoche.

Yes, okay, a further response, yes.

Sorry about that, Minister. I’ll go to Deputy Minister Guy.