Thank you. Page 422, asset management, active positions, information item only.

Thank you. Page 425, directorate, operations expenditure summary, $11.874 million. Mr. Dolynny.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to again zone in on the responsibility of the directorate under the Occupational Health and Safety Program and its activities. Through procured services, a lot of the contractors now go through

this division for various functions and cross-departmental initiatives. So, to the question, do we have, or does PWS, under procured shared services, have a contractor management system in place? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Mr. Guy.

The reason for my questioning is that I’m fully aware that the department and the government do not have a contractor management system. We’ve got a voluntary system where, as you’ve heard, companies will come and register themselves. So, what are the minimum standards that we are asking these companies to have in terms of requirements for safety? Thank you.

The requirements of a WSCC or actually being an active participant with the WSCC in good standing, all that means is that you’re paid in full. That’s all part of having a WSCC certification. It doesn’t preclude the fact that you’re supposed to have minimum levels of standards.

Let me liken our sister province to the south of us here. Alberta has numerous programs in place. It has what is referred to as a Health and Safety Management System where the requirements, the company has management leadership and organizational commitment, has hazard identification and assessment hazard control, worksite inspections provided, worker competency and training, incident reporting investigation, emergency response planning and program administration. These are the basic requirements that anyone wanting to work for the government as a contractor has to have, including what is referred to as partnerships in injury reduction programs, which is a voluntary program. These are just various tools that other jurisdictions have in order to have the competencies in place so that when the Government of Alberta is working with contractors through its shared services and procurement, we know that these companies are up to par and have a full, engaged Occupational Health and Safety system.

So, to the question: if the government is acting as a principal contractor and we may be obligated to indemnify agents or contractors while working for

the government and their responsibilities, by what virtue do we have to guarantee that these companies are living up to the level of safety standards that we would think they’d have?

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Minister Beaulieu.

Thank you, Madam Chair. We are beginning to move into a lot of safety areas as we continue to work with the Workers’ Safety Commission. We have contracts in place where when a contractor gets on a site, they would have to have a safety plan for the people on site. We don’t believe that WSCC is only there to collect premiums. Actually, we believe that people who are in construction are different than individuals who may be in retail and the requirement for having some safety plan in place on a construction site versus something that just may protect employees against some lighter duty injuries. I know that there are more stringent rules surrounding what we, as this department, monitor are heavy construction sites, building construction sites, large buildings. Aside from that, I’m going to ask the deputy minister to provide more detail on what we need in order for a contractor to get on site and before a contractor is able to have an actual contract for constructing one of our buildings. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. Mr. Guy.

Thank you, Mr. Guy. Mr. Dolynny.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m hearing that we’re working towards something, but

we don’t have anything. That’s what I’m hearing. To me, this is a huge concern. I’ve brought this up on the floor of the House many times. The court system has also indicated that the government is lacking, if I may remind the department and the Minister here. What is it going to take if we’re going to do this right and if we’re going to get a proper contractor management system in place where requirements are clearly spelled out in a very firm policy, much like we see in every other province in Canada? Why is it a year later – we’ve had procured shared services for one year now. Why is that we cannot have that level of detail so that we can, by virtue, be very clear to anyone who is doing contractual obligations, who is signing up on RFPs, who is doing any type of site work whether it’s on construction on a road or in a building, that we have a policy in place that deals specifically with what our requirements are, especially if we’re the principal contractor? When are we going to get this in place?

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Minister Beaulieu.

Thank you, Madam Chair. This is a process. If we were to introduce, say, an association of some sort and say that all contractors must be certified under this system as of today, we would be eliminating the majority of our contractors in the small communities. We would be eliminating the majority of our contractors in the NWT, period.

We need to work with the contractors. We need to move into this process. Eventually we do hope to have everyone covered under some sort of certification indicating that they do have safety certification to be on any job site, but how we introduce that does take some time. We need to ensure that we’re in touch with all contractors that work for us.

When you consider that anybody that could be cleaning our offices and cleaning this building, right to individual contractors that are on site on our biggest jobs, if we’re going to make sure that every one of those people are certified before they get on site, like I said, we will be eliminating a lot of people.

We need to work with our contractors. We’ve developed these contractors over the years. Now, the safety is an important issue and we’re moving towards that. We’re moving into that direction, but to have a drop dead date and say everybody has to be certified at this point would not work. We would essentially eliminate too many of our contractors and we would almost come to a standstill unless we’re bringing contractors up from the South.

We will commit to having the majority of the individuals safety certified to be on our sites by the end of the next fiscal year. If we have the majority of them done and it’s not going to affect our

business at hand, then we’re able to move beyond that. We’re able to say then that if most people are certified, then we’re able to put in the contract that you must be certified in order to do this job.

Just as an example, if we have a building under construction and we indicate that the principal contractor, which could be us, but the principal contractor, the main contractor, the general contractor on site has to be certified, then every single individual contractor, big and small, that goes on site has to be certified. We have to be aware of that as well.

Once we move into this area and we start making this a hard and fast rule for contractors in the Northwest Territories with government programs and we make that decision, there’s no turning back, so we have to move cautiously to make sure we’re not leaving people out in the cold.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Mr. Dolynny, your time is up. Directorate, operations expenditure summary, $11.874 million. Mr. Bromley.

I don’t see it here but I believe this division would deal with legislation. Am I correct in that assumption?

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Beaulieu.

Yes, that is correct.

Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. Mr. Bromley.

Thanks, Madam Chair. I know the Minister and I had a conversation in the House here about developing an energy efficiency act, and I know the Minister is aware that the most recent Energy Charrette once again recommended both in the short term and the medium term that we get in place an energy efficiency act. Can I ask, is that budgeted for in this budget?