Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. I’ll go to Mr. Guy.
Debates of March 6th, 2015
This is page numbers 6021 – 6060 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 communities.
Topics
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Guy
Thank you, Mr. Chair. The issue on the tender of the procurement shared services, one additional thing that we are doing is we are working with the Department of Finance on the procurement modules under the financial system. Those modules have a feature in there that will allow for vendor registration, so all the vendors that we do regular business with, or business that are interested in government contracts or tenders will be able to register through that website and they’ll get automatic notification of upcoming tenders, addendums and other matters related to our procurement. We are looking to see that as a significant improvement in making people aware. Because in addition to posting on the website, as we do now, and putting it in the newspapers, this is an enhanced form of providing notification to vendors. So that’s a new feature that will be available going forward.
On OHS we have quite a bit of activity in the department, and in OHS we are working closely with Human Resources on the work they’re doing, the Department of Human Resources. Also, we’ve done a lot of work internally to ensure that our managers have completed the supervisor training modules through the Northern Safety Association sponsored by WSCC. We have developed a lot of material. In fact, we have developed material that has now been adopted by WSCC and the Safety Association for asbestos management for all of our projects which we do and available to all the contractors and other governments and individuals involved in working with asbestos.
We have done a lot of work for our front-line trades folks on fall protection training and confined space entry training. An area that is emerging for both ourselves and the Department of Health that we have put a lot of effort into, both in the new facilities and the existing health facilities, are managing issues and OHS around infection control in health facilities. We have trained 68 of our staff members
in that area. Our workplace and general purpose office space, we have made sure we have all the standard First Aid training, CPR training that we need.
We’ve also been working closely with the Northern Safety Association to look at how we can improve our relationship on safety with the contractors and the contracting community to make sure that the safety requirements are incorporated into the contracts that we put to work on the government facilities.
We also have our regular joint occupational and health safety committees for each PWS worksite in the department. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
The Chair Robert Bouchard
Thank you, Mr. Guy. I will go to Director Gault to talk about the phone system. Thank you.
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Gault
Thank you, Mr. Chair. With regard to the new phone system, the current system is almost 30 years old and is very close to it its end of life. The current contract with the GNWT ends in the fall of 2016. So, we did the business case to look at our options, and it was determined that we could foresee increasing costs to replace phone sets and make changes of moving the phones around, et cetera. Those costs were only going to continue to increase.
The new system will run over the GNWT data network, and the hardware costs are dramatically reduced, the long-distance cost will be reduced. The system will be supported by the TSC, so we will be able to do those internal moves within our current staff. So, all of these contribute to an approximately $6 million savings over 10 years. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Bob Bromley Weledeh
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just have a few brief comments. I know there has been a transfer of energy, $6.1 million into this department, which is significant. I am looking forward to discussing this. I am sure there is forced growth, yet those seem, relative to those amounts, a modest increase. In other words, probably a net decrease to the department’s budget in a sense. I am curious about that.
I wonder if I could just get a general comment on carry-overs and how we are doing with that with our infrastructure, specifically maybe how climate change is rearing its head. I know about some shipping issues with the Mackenzie River low water levels and so on and how those are being handled and a general sense of what the costs are becoming as we deal with that. That’s it. I am going to reserve any detailed comments for later. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The details on the increase being lower than the amount of money we’ve got from energy, the consolidation of energy services. I’m going to have Director Lewis give the details on the ins and outs. Like the Member indicated, it was a bit of a net decrease once you consider we had an increase in the collective bargaining and then we took on the energy function at $6.1 million, but the overall increase was lower than that. So we’ll have that explanation.
We don’t have the details on carry-overs. All of the carry-overs are based on capital items. So we can provide the anticipated surplus for O and M, but we don’t have carry-overs for the capital with us.
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So, the Public Works and Services capital, if that’s what the Member is referring to as opposed to capital in general, we handle a lot of the construction for most of the departments. If the Member is looking for just carry-overs on PWS projects, we can probably provide that information.
Climate change, yes, we agree that did have some impact on the shipping this year. Water levels were extremely low and could possibly be attributed to that. We try to get our product in very early. Generally as soon as the waterways are ready for shipping, we try to get our product in, so we have a very good working relationship with the shipper. We have a price that’s probably a very competitive price for shipping our products in. We try to get our products in as early as possible. In the last shipment that was unable to go past the ramparts, we did have some product there, some fuel. However, it wasn’t essential fuel. We were just putting some surplus fuel into one of the communities and maybe some surplus fuel in other communities. There was an impact on private companies where their fuel didn’t get all the way up the river, but not on our fuel services at the department.
Maybe I will have the deputy minister provide some... No, first I will go to Director Lewis to talk about the ins and outs to come up with the moderate increase that we had in our overall budget. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Lewis
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Without going into too much detail, at the end of the day the change was about $1.8 million in target reductions that we’re netting off of that. On the plus side, we had about 1.9 million to do with asset inventory adjustments in maintenance, costs associated with
that; there was about another $1.5 million to do with utility increases; and part of the energy money coming over, while there was $6-some-odd-million that was transferred, there were some sunsets as part of that funding. At the end of the day, we netted out at an increase of about $5 million over our previous year’s main estimates. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Guy
Thank you, Mr. Chair. In terms of carry-overs for our own PWS capital, I think this year was probably going to be one of our lower years for us in terms of carry-overs. Many of our projects are coming to completion and the carry-overs have been a little bit less than typical on our PWS projects.
On our client-managed capital, I expect the carry-overs on the projects will be similar to previous years, maybe a little bit lower, but we are just at that point right now in the fiscal year where we’re starting to calculate those and provide that information to the Department of Finance to forecast. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
The Chair Robert Bouchard
Thank you, deputy minister. I think there’s clarification for you, Mr. Bromley, about whether you are talking about PWS capital or the overall GNWT capital. Mr. Bromley.
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Bob Bromley Weledeh
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thanks for all the response. I am happy with that. I didn’t express it well, but I was interrelating whether climate change impacts were having an effect on carry-overs. I think we are starting to get at it: the water levels on the river, the smoke has had an effect on some construction in Yellowknife, delays with the highway shipment and so on. Those sorts of things that, as the Minister said, are not known to be climate change but certainly very consistent with it and possibly related. I think I started to hear a response there. Sorry for the confusion. If there are any more comments, great, but that’s all I had for now.
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Guy
Thank you, Mr. Chair. With the clarification, I understand. None of the particular projects we are managing had a significant impact around delayed barge schedule, or any shipment of materials for projects were not impacted last fiscal year or the work that we have underway right now. As the Minister said, on the marine resupply side and low water, we do work our hardest to get our order of magnitude in early. For example, for this shipping season, order of magnitude has already been placed with the carrier, so they can make their plans and plan the shipping schedule and get our stuff, our fuel delivered early into those
communities that will most likely be most impacted by low water.
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Kevin A. Menicoche Nahendeh
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I am just going to touch on a few things I raised in the past couple of weeks. One was the delivery of fuel to the small communities. One Member may have asked, but have the tenders gone out and is the fuel being delivered as we speak? Is the purchase as anticipated? Hopefully that means the communities will get cheaper fuel for the upcoming year.
As well, I was wondering about the RFP for the Fort Simpson Health Centre planning study. I was wondering about progress on that front. Generally, I raised in the House about Nogha Enterprises building a new office space, potentially breaking ground this summer. I wonder if the department has had contact with them to discuss current and future office needs in Fort Simpson. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe
Thank you, Mr. Chair. We have two communities in the Deh Cho that we are delivering fuel to. Nahanni Butte diesel fuel is currently 25 percent complete. The diesel order is about 384,000 litres. We’ve delivered 98,000 litres. In Trout Lake the diesel fuel is 55 percent complete. The order is about 140,000 litres of diesel, and we’ve delivered 62,000 litres of diesel and 49,000 litres of gasoline. We haven’t delivered any of the gasoline that was ordered into Nahanni Butte yet, but we aren’t anticipating any problems at all delivering all of what was ordered.
Mr. Chairman, with that, I will just have the deputy minister talk about the RFP and the office space and Nogha Enterprises. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Guy
Thank you, Mr. Chair. We are aware of the initiatives about the proposed office space development. We are looking at our needs right now in that community and how it would fit into our existing leases. We have been working with them and talking to them. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters