Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just wanted to make some brief opening comments. Public Works and Services has been working on the shared services and procured shared services and we’ve been trying to work out some of the details on this process. I guess overall I support the concept of centralizing or regionalizing some of this purchasing. You know, in the Hay River area we’ve been able to get some of those positions and do some of that stuff.

I guess I’ve been hearing some concerns, and there are some growing pains of going back to this process. I say “back” because I think the government used to do this a long time ago, centralized purchasing. I guess there are just some growing pains between the link between Public Works and Services and the departments and some of the people supplying the products, whether it be northern manufacturers, which we recently had a meeting with as well as some of the people who supply it. I’ve heard the Department of Health from the people that supply equipment to the health service.

I guess I’m giving a little bit of time to Public Works and Services to deal with the growth and the learning curve of learning these departments and how those people have to learn some of the specialties of the individual departments. I understand there’s a link between the department and shared services, but I’m not sure exactly how that works with the department as far as the specs. Some of these people that have been supplying to the health field have been training some of those departments, some of the health departments, some of the people in the regions that this is what they need, but this is what we provide, this is what’s available, whether it’s a hospital bed or whether it’s a specialized tub. Like, there are a bunch of specs that they need.

So I know there’s a learning curve for shared services to get up to speed on some of the specialty stuff from each department. When we deal with Transportation, for example, of a plow truck, what’s required in a plow truck? Because I think some of the stuff has been there for years as far as the Department of Transportation knows what they want, but now they have to go to shared services and explain that. So there’s a little bit of a learning curve, and if the Minister could just talk about where the shared services is going in learning and getting up to speed in that link between departments and the procurement side of it.

I’m glad to continue to see the deferred maintenance slowly going down. I don’t know the actual number when we started in this Assembly, but I know the number has been going down pretty steadily. So, obviously, we’re happy with the new health centre in Hay River and I think that alleviates some of the deferred maintenance.

Just looking through my notes from the business plans, one of the things was e-waste. I know we continue to look at ways of dealing with the e-waste. I know the government goes through a lot of e-waste and I know we’ve been trying some pilot projects, but I think we just need to commit to fixing it, to taking it on. I know, through my private side, a lot of that e-waste is being shipped south now. I think they’re doing that in Fort Smith. So, I mean, I

think the government needs to come in on getting rid of some of that e-waste and not letting it go to the landfill and not letting it go into surplus, because most of the time it ends up in the landfill after a few things have been taken from it. So I think we need to commit, as a government, to getting rid of the e-waste, get a full recycling program going on it. I know Public Works is dealing with a lot of that because they end up with the surplus assets.

The other one that I know Public Works and Services I’ve been trying to send them notes whenever space comes available and decentralization, and I guess if we can get a little bit of an update on where Public Works is doing assessments in the communities, the smaller centres of their office space available. I even recently heard of Simpson, looking at opportunities there for more office space. Where does the department see that going forward? I think the department is one of the key links in decentralization as far as office space is concerned. Obviously, Housing is for housing issues and other departments as far as getting their positions decentralized. So that’s an area of concern, and I know Public Works is engaged with that decentralization.

So, those are my main concerns with this department. Thank you, Mr. Chair.