Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The procurement shared services is a process that I described previously. We received a lot of positive comments from the decentralized tender desk, the regional desk. We intend to continue to monitor the procurement shared services. We believe that we have increased the quality of tendering. We work with all of the departments. We will be doing internal audits on the procurement shared services so that if there is anything that we think we could improve on in this type of procurement, we will do it.
The occupational health and safety, I will have the deputy minister provide a little more detail.
Energy functions we have done for many reasons that we talked about. We have the conservation, the developing of the policy, the programs, energy programs for the communities and for businesses through the Arctic Energy Alliance. Again, if the Member is wanting to get more specific details on the energy, the consolidated energy division, then we will have the deputy minister provide that.
Fuel services is posted how we come up with our prices. Whether or not we are going to determine buying forward, if we think it is the thing to do, there is a certain price of fuel… Right now we could determine what we would pay if we bought fuel for July, as an example. We would go to a company and buy fuel for July, and if that fuel… It’s called hedging, as the Member knows. So we can hedge up to 70 percent of our fuel purchases for what the government purchases. It’s something that we have our people watching the price go up and down and what the rack price is for fuel when we purchase it,
when we ship it in and so on. It’s quite a complex process, but we post it, how our prices come about. If we think the prices need to be brought down in the future, we will bring them down. If we think the prices need to be brought up, we will bring the prices up. It’s all on the fact that we don’t profit on the prices. It’s the cost of the product, the transportation of product and community distribution. Of course, our staff that are needed to purchase the fuel and get the fuel into the communities are all charged to the fuel price that we sell at the end.
After the deputy minister provides some more detail, I will have the director, Ms. Gault, provide the information on the new phone system, including what we think the savings will be. Thank you.