Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just want to give a few comments on each of these areas and I’ll have the deputy minister provide some detail.
The procurement shared services from the government’s perspective is something that is very positive. We consider it to be very positive for industry as well. It does consolidate the contracting, tendering and so on. We have offices now in the various locations across the North that handle the procurement services for all of government and all the departments, plus the NWT Housing Corporation. We feel that it’s going to improve the quality of our contracting and our tendering process, something that the government looked and felt was the way to go to bring efficiencies to the government and effectiveness.
The Deferred Maintenance Program, yes, each time we bring new assets into the government and dispose of older assets, our deferred maintenance comes down. We also do major mid-life retrofits on buildings and reduce the deferred maintenance in that way. So, as I indicated in my opening remarks, deferred maintenance, seven or eight years ago, started over $470 million and it’s down to about $270 million. So we are bringing our deferred maintenance costs down, but immediately as we introduce new buildings into the government
inventory, the deferred maintenance on that building starts to accumulate until which point we do either a mid-life retrofit or do a replacement.
As far as e-waste with the GNWT itself, Public Works and Services has been dealing with the electronic waste of the GNWT, our own employees, for the past 10 years. We have had relationships with organizations in Alberta. We take all of the computers or any of the electronic waste that comes from the public service and we deal with it. We send it down south. We have an organization down south that deals with our electronic waste. The bigger e-waste program for the general population is going to be something that the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources introduces now as part of the recycling program that is run by ENR.
Specific to office space and housing, I could talk about the amount of market housing that the Housing Corporation is going to put out there in the communities for market housing not necessarily targeted specifically at decentralization but for office space. I will have the deputy minister, if need be, provide a little more detail on these four areas and also some specifics on the office space. Thank you, Mr. Chair.