Floyd Roland

Thank you, Madam Chair. Again, for the record, the original estimates that were done did show, in fact, there was going to be a substantial increase from the old facility. The attachment provided to members shows that, for example, electricity, the units that they would use, 2.8 million kilowatt hours, as well as unit cost of that, the heating costs of 25,000 gigajules and the unit costs for that. What happened was the original estimate was done in 1999. It showed a substantial increase. As the facility came online, there was another estimate done using newer information, and it showed...

Thank you, Madam Chair. There were a number of things that happened. One was to cordon off the area itself where the collapse happened. The facility was not in use for about three weeks. Repairs were started, inspections done on the facility and the normal work that would happen about that. When it was about to be opened, unfortunately there was an incident occurred where an individual had decided that they did not want to return to school is my understanding. So they lit one section of the school on fire. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, yes, the money is being spent in this year. What has been happening is we hired the consultants initially to look at the facility, as well as a replacement process that goes on. There are tests being done on the three resupply pipelines, as well there is an awarding of the construction contract for two vertical tanks and an order of resupply piping and a number of other things. So this is work that will be done so they can be prepared for the barge shipping dates in the summer of 2005. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following document entitled Government of the Northwest Territories 2003 Public Service Annual Report. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, after a substantial amount of work done on this from the finance and insurance side, an audit was done on the facility as well as work done from the Public Works and Services end, to see if the procedures that were being followed and done were appropriate, as well as what may have been the cause of the failure.

There were a number of things that happened and the difficulty is the fact that this building is 37 years old and trying to go back to the actual construction of the facility and further repairs that may have been done. In doing the history and...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, that Bill 14, Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 4, 2003-2004, be read for the third time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is not an increase in the actual premiums. This is a shift between the Department of Health and Social Services over to the Department of Finance. We found in a case where Health and Social Services was doing some of its own insuring we felt that there was a savings by transferring it over and this is the amount that we feel…It’s actually health boards, I believe, were insuring some of their own items. So we’ve pulled them into our total government insurance program, by that saving some numbers. But there is an added cost to their side of the equation and that’s...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the numbers that were provided were using just actual costs in comparison to where the costs are now. So it wasn’t budgeted based on the old hospital, just comparing the 2002-03 year with the actuals for 2003-04 to show the increases that occurred. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Supplementary Appropriation No. 2 requests authority for additional appropriations of $11.201 million for operations expenditures and $5.450 million for capital investment expenditures.

Major items included in this request for operations expenditures are as follows:

$4.7 million for the Department of Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development for additional fire suppression costs incurred due to severe forest fire conditions in 2004.

$2.5 million for the Department of Education, Culture and Employment for emergency repairs to Samuel Hearne Senior Secondary School in...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I guess ultimately we’ve come down to the fact that there was an underestimating of the consumption of power and the gas, as well as maintenance required for the facility. The facility did double in size from just over 4,000 square metres to over 8,000 square metres. The new code requirements for air exchange units and air cooling systems add more to the cost of the ongoing daily operation of that.

For example, from 2002-03 to 2003-04 the heating costs increased by over 80 percent. Power consumption has more than doubled from just over one million kilowatts to just...