This is page numbers 5179 – 5220 of the Hansard for the 17th Assembly, 5th Session. The original version can be accessed on the Legislative Assembly's website or by contacting the Legislative Assembly Library. The word of the day was services.

Topics

Jackson Lafferty

Jackson Lafferty Monfwi

There is price index added to our contribution to the district education councils, so yes, the formula is already set up that way with our contribution. Mahsi.

Alfred Moses

Alfred Moses Inuvik Boot Lake

I know the Minister does meet with the chairs of the DECs on a regular basis, but he also meets with the education authority staff I am sure. I am sure the Minister knows how many times the education authority has talked about needing more funding to do the programs and services and even things such as travel for board meetings, travel to meet staff, professional development, all of those things can be affected.

What is the Minister doing right now to meet with the Beaufort-Delta Education Authority to offset the high costs before and after the Junior Kindergarten money was taken away from the education

authority budget to these 23 communities in the Northwest Territories? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Jackson Lafferty

Jackson Lafferty Monfwi

Yes, I’m fully aware of the cost factors going to the communities. Since I got on board, I’ve been travelling to the communities and that’s what we’ve been hearing. There are high costs of living in the communities, especially when you have to travel for professional development.

Based on our contribution on the enrollment, we provide funding to the district education council and they decide where the money should be expended. They do have a budget for travel, as well, a budget for professional development. They also work with NWTTA. That’s been allocated as part of their negotiation with the school boards, that professional development fee, and the funding is allocated pertaining to that.

So, those are some of the areas that we have been working with the DECs and NWTTA. We’ll continue to push that forward. Mahsi.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Moses.

Alfred Moses

Alfred Moses Inuvik Boot Lake

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I know that, you know, moving forward with certain programs such as Education Renewal and Innovation, Junior Kindergarten Program and other of the action plans that we had, and I know it was emphasized from the Standing Committee on Social Programs that they would be willing to support a supplementary appropriation for any of those programs that offset the costs that weren’t agreed to in our last main estimate sitting.

So, I’m wondering if the Minister would be looking, halfway through the year, at this Junior Kindergarten Program and whether or not program services are being effected within the education system and the Junior Kindergarten system. If his department would be looking at coming forth with supplementary appropriation to offset those costs and let the education authorities out there know that we support all the work that they do, whether they had a surplus before or a deficit. Will he be willing to come back with a supplementary appropriation halfway through the year, looking at the proposed budgets right now and the money that’s coming out of some education authorities right now? Thank you.

Jackson Lafferty

Jackson Lafferty Monfwi

Mahsi. The Beaufort-Delta District Education Council obviously has been in deficit prior to the JK in discussion. The administration, the superintendent and the board chairs are doing what they can to get out of the deficit and we are there to assist them as well.

As we committed in this House, the 23 communities that are rolling out Junior Kindergarten, there will be a review of that and we will be working with the regional centres and also Yellowknife, based on our

discussion and their input. So, those are the discussions that we need to collect from them, their input into how to best deliver that programming. So that has been a commitment that was made in the House. Mahsi.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.

Wendy Bisaro

Wendy Bisaro Frame Lake

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Public Works and Services and I want to follow up on my Member’s statement about procurement.

I gave an example in my Member’s statement and the example I gave means that there’s an extra cost to both the government and to the taxpayers. We are paying a premium in this case which is at least 40 percent, 50 percent more than what we should.

So, I’d like to first ask the Minister something that I asked in my statement. Is there a maximum amount or what is the amount that we are willing to pay before we will cancel a tender and start again?

I mentioned 200 percent, 300 percent; in this case it’s 40 or 50 percent. But is there a policy or a guideline that we use? I would like to remind the Minister that in his statement today he talked about reasonable prices, and this is a perfect example of an unreasonable price that we are paying. Thank you.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister of Public Works, Mr. Beaulieu.

Tom Beaulieu

Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When a department puts out a tender that Public Works and Services is going through their procurement for, we use a budget as the limitation. The budget will govern how high we’re able to go with the tender. Thank you.

Wendy Bisaro

Wendy Bisaro Frame Lake

Thanks to the Minister for that. It’s hard for me to believe in this case that the budget allowed a differential of $60,000.

In the Minister’s Statement earlier he started off his statement by saying, we want to make sure that local businesses can benefit from government contracting opportunities, and that’s a lot of the point that I’m trying to make today.

I’d like to ask the Minister, what does he ensure, or what does Public Works and Services, would procurement shared services do to ensure that northern businesses get government contracting opportunities? How does procurement maximize the process for northern vendors? Thank you.

Tom Beaulieu

Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe

Thank you. The procurement shared services follows the Business Incentive Policy. The Business Incentive Policy is

there to give an advantage to the northern suppliers, northern providers of service. So we use that to make up the difference usually in a product that comes from the South versus something that we’re procuring in the Northwest Territories. Thank you.

Wendy Bisaro

Wendy Bisaro Frame Lake

BIP doesn’t always apply and I have discovered that BIP doesn’t apply if you are considered non-compliant or unresponsive, which I guess if you’re out you’re out, but in this case one of the difficulties was that the tender was made difficult to understand. The tender document was looking for equivalencies to a particular product, but it doesn’t define the term “equivalencies” and it’s left to the bidder to try and figure out what that is. In a lot of cases they will state equivalencies are acceptable, but ultimately want a very specific product, and as I said in my statement, why do we not just say so? We want product X and never mind the equivalencies because if they’re trying to match it to something that already exists, an equivalency won’t do.

So in a case like this, what adjustments will the department make to assist bidders in better understanding our tenders and what we’re looking for in a bid? Thank you.

Tom Beaulieu

Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe

We can add the definition of equivalent into the tenders if that would be of help. Anything that has the right form, fit, function and quality would be considered to be an equivalent product. Thank you.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.

Wendy Bisaro

Wendy Bisaro Frame Lake

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In this case it was a matter of furniture and, as the Minister says, form, fit and function. They all fit, but they were off enough because it was not the exact same product, a product not available in the North, it was deemed unresponsive.

Lastly I’d like to ask the Minister, with centralized procurement shared services, it’s a new product, it’s a new service that we are putting out. I presume we expect to see improvements.

Will there be any kind of an evaluation or any kind of an analysis of whether or not there are improvements and when will we see that? Thank you.

Tom Beaulieu

Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe

Thank you. When the government determines to put together a shared service, whether it be a financial shared service or any other shared services that we offer, we do that based on efficiency and effectiveness of the product or item for the task that we’re trying to perform. So it would be essential, I believe, for us to review procurement shared services. We could perhaps run it for two years and then do an evaluation to see if it did function and did meet its

intent to improve efficiency and effectiveness of procurement services. Thank you.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Jane Groenewegen

Jane Groenewegen Hay River South

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources. I had the opportunity to attend the kick-off of the Energy Charrette last night at the Explorer Hotel. I found it very interesting that the keynote speaker was talking about the great decline in the cost of capital infrastructure for alternate energy. It used to be that the payback on investment in wind and solar and different alternative energy sources was prohibitive. Now the cost has gone down, it’s diminished to such a great extent and yet we in the GNWT can’t seem to get on board. I know the Minister will point to the solar panels in Fort Simpson and the Arctic Energy Alliance with their rebate on new appliances and small things like that, yet we, as a government, continue to spend millions of dollars, which by comparison, what we’re actually doing that is tangible is a pittance.

So I would like to ask Minister Miltenberger in his very knowledgeable opinion, where is the Northwest Territories going next in terms of energy? Thank you.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, Mr. Miltenberger.

Michael Miltenberger

Michael Miltenberger Thebacha

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the Premier laid out yesterday, we’re looking at a shift away from the initial project where we looked at costing out the transmission build out, which is still a very good project, but it’s fiscally not affordable. So we’re looking at focusing on generation, the opportunities to add generation in places like Yellowknife and all the thermal communities to cut the cost of living, look at the rate structures, how do we in fact make commercial rates more affordable in the thermal communities where the price impact on citizens on food bills and those types of things is prohibitive. We’re looking as we finalize the borrowing limit in investing in a very significant amount of money in that focus. Thank you.

Jane Groenewegen

Jane Groenewegen Hay River South

Mr. Speaker, I’ve been here as long as the Minister has been here in this House and the Minister could tell us right now how many days we have left in the 17th Assembly. I’m

sure he knows. I want to say I for one, as my colleague used to say, am sick and tired of talking about this while we spend money on chasing rabbit trails that go nowhere.

How many millions of dollars did we spend talking about the Taltson expansion, for the power purchase agreements for the mines, which went absolutely nowhere? I could have told you that was going to go nowhere. We were never going to build a transmission line across the East Arm of Great Slave Lake to the diamond mines. Then the study to whether we should build a transmission line to hook up the grid. All of these studies, reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, I mean, we could fill a library with all of the studies that we have done. Yet I want to say we need to leave a legacy of the 17th Assembly. Maybe it’s partly devolution, I don’t know what it is, but this Minister has been here a long time. I’d like to start doing some tangible things so that we can say that we made a difference and we just did not continue to spend millions of dollars thinking about it, looking at it, holding energy charrettes. Let’s do it.

Michael Miltenberger

Michael Miltenberger Thebacha

Its 335 days, not counting the bill that’s going to be given assent to on Thursday. So it will be another six weeks added to that. We have the same goal. All this work is going to be predicated on the successful conclusion of the borrowing limit discussions with the federal government. The minute we know that number, then perhaps we can put a dollar figure out there that we seriously want to invest in making that kind of transformational shift that the Premier referred to in his comments yesterday. Thank you.

Jane Groenewegen

Jane Groenewegen Hay River South

In this House I’ve spoken about this before and I would like the Minister to tell me again why we can’t, if we’re trying to reduce our carbon footprint, why can we not increase our use of biomass by putting pellet stoves or woodstoves in the homes of NWT residents that would significantly and immediately impact their cost of living if they chose to subscribe to this offer. We can do it. When John Todd was Minister of Finance he threw out $10,000 grants under the Downpayment Assistance Program like he was throwing out peanuts at a Sunday school picnic. I mean, it was broadcast. Anyway, that is something small, it is something tangible.

Will the Minister put out an RFP for a supplier of pellet woodstoves to start installing them in the homes of NWT residents? Thank you.

Michael Miltenberger

Michael Miltenberger Thebacha

Thank you. Once again, I mean, the Member and I share the same intent. We have put millions into rebate and incentive programs to encourage people, to assist people to buy energy-efficient appliances, to switch to biomass and some of these programs are serious money, like tens of thousands of dollars for the commercial applications; for residents, there’s a fairly significant one. So if there’s a need to sweeten that pot to provide greater incentive, I think we would be prepared to look at that as we go forward and our fiscal situation becomes clear.

I wasn’t joking yesterday, as well, when I talked about if we did a wholesale change-out of all the incandescent, sodium vapour lights in the Northwest Territories, what would that save us in terms of energy costs? Those are very fundamental quick, immediate things that we can do. We’re switching streetlights right now, but those are the types of short-term, immediate impact things that I think we’d be in the position to discuss, once again, once the borrowing limit discussions are concluded.