Floyd Roland

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, we can provide that detail to the Members around that. Again, it is accounted for in our financial statements, and I believe it can be found in public accounts, as well. For example, last year we had booked $900,000 for the financing cost as well as the amortization of our facilities. So that was the amount that was booked for last year. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the way the process would work, if there’s a requirement for office space in a community, the department that would be requiring the space would come to us and seek our input as to if there is existing space available. If there is no existing space available, then they would come to us with a requirement for a certain size of space and what they would be needing it for. We would then get involved in that process of coming up with some preliminary estimates and designs. At that point, the department, with those figures, would go forward and see if they...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it is not the intention to phase out the affirmative action policy of the Government of the Northwest Territories. What we have looked at are a number of the reports that were done by previous assemblies, and Members of previous assemblies and one of the recommendations in one of those reports suggests that the name be changed to employment equity and that’s one of the considerations we’re taking into consideration as we go about the review of the government’s affirmative action policy. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, we do account for this as a grant in kind; that portion, when we do our audited financial statements within the petroleum products division. We do identify it at that stage that it is a grant-in-kind, the capital costs in that area. So it is identified at that stage.

For the other work that's happening around subsidies within the government, right now the petroleum products subsidy is not included in that, but there was a feeling that once that was established and moving forward, that that would be another issue that we would look at. But it is not...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman the Member raises a number of good points about why it would be good to try to keep a facility in the community as long as possible.

In this day and age, the cost of replacing facilities is very expensive. Part of the problems we run into though, is the age of the facility and the code that buildings were built to back when, in this particular case, the building was built in 1957. The code requirements at that time were much different that they are in today’s environment. In fact, there has been a technical status evaluation done on that facility and...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the affirmative action statistics information is provided to committee members through the process we go through. We do provide supplemental information. As we’ve seen, our main estimates documents have grown because we’ve added additional information in there and I guess the feeling at that time was, as we’re going forward, we do supply the information on affirmative action statistics to Members and felt it wasn’t necessary in the document itself. But we’ll take it under advisement if Members would like to see that changed again. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I believe that request was made in 2003-04 and granted in that year.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I am pleased to present the Department of Public Works and Services' main estimates for the fiscal year 2005-06.

The main estimates propose a department operations and maintenance budget for 2005-06 of $44.3 million and an infrastructure investment plan of $7.8 million. This is a .08 percent decrease over the 2004-2005 Main Estimates.

Public Works and Services provides necessary technical and professional support to other departments as they work to achieve government objectives by delivering direct services to our residents. The resources of Public Works and Services...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The percentage in 2003 from our own stats of aboriginal employees would be in the area of 32 percent, an average between all communities. The affirmative action policy is still something that we use on every position out there and it’s a consideration on any options we have to do hiring throughout the government. The affirmative action policy is in place and is used for positions that are advertised. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, what we do in a number of cases or in the past, again, we haven’t got into privatization initiatives for a number of years now, but what was done in the past when a community or business would request that this be done and there was support for it, an agreement would be put in place. There would be a timeline established as well for the final transactions to happen and the company would take over full operations. I believe in the case of Tuktoyaktuk it was a five-year agreement that was in place, but after year four there was an agreement to proceed with...