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.