Glen Abernethy

Thank you, Mr. Chair. On my right is Sylvia Haener. She’s the deputy minister of the Department of Justice. On my left is Kim Schofield, the director of finance, same department.

The short answer is yes. The steps required for the disposal of the Hay River hospital include a number of different steps. The Department of Health and Social Services, as I’ve indicated previously, must first identify that they don’t have any use for it. If they have some uses for it, then we will work with them to find a way to make that building meet those needs. If the old hospital is actually deemed surplus to the needs of the Department of Health and Social Services, the disposal of the facility would follow our normal provisions, which I’m sure the Member is familiar with, and that’s...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Member and I have had a number of conversations about that Tulita farm upgrade that we’re doing there. Just for the record, it is substantially complete. We’re using the old dispensers for the remainder of this year, as the new dispensers will actually be in in the spring. But for the most part, it is substantially complete and I have already committed to the Member that we would do a bit of a post-mortem on this project.

Having said that, we have also worked with the community and the Member and everybody involved when those issues did come up. I believe that we were...

I do, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chair, as long as these assets exist, we will continue to have to do some lifecycle upgrades and retrofits. This just happens to be a period in the lifecycle where there is none on the books today, but there will be more coming. We believe the next one that will need to have a complete upgrade, similar to what happened in Tulita, would be Whati. We want to do our planning on that to make sure we get it right and to make sure we have the life cycling of these things done appropriately so that we don’t experience any spillages or breaches in our tanks. So right now we’re just in a low point...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, it’s been completely resolved. There was some issue with some of the valves. There were some faulty valves that happened to be in Fort Good Hope and that was brought to your attention and you and I discussed it. We’ve dealt with that and we’ve looked at the valves that were bought that were similar, to make sure there were no more faulty valves out there. For a little more detail on that, I will go to Deputy Minister Guy, please.

I’m just going back to the Capital Asset Retrofit Fund and I agree with what the Member is saying and I think we are both on the same page here. Having said that, we’re looking to get to the $3.8 million. Even when we do get to the $3.8 million, we aren’t stopping. We are going to continue to spend the money every year. It would be nice to see it grow, but let’s get to the target there first. As the Member knows, we already build to a higher degree than the Canadian Building Standards already, but I am interested to learn about this standard that the Member is talking about. Maybe we can get...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I take the point. The Housing Corporation and Public Works and Services obviously are capable of sharing information back and forth. The deputy certainly has a number of conversations with the Housing Corporation on a regular basis. We will absolutely share all of the information we have and any of the technical specifications we use within the Public Works and Services-managed building projects and buildings.

Frankly, we all know that the biomass is a good product. It’s affordable, it’s environmentally friendly or certainly more friendly than gas or diesel. We are...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. With me today is Paul Guy, the deputy minister of Public Works and Services.

Mr. Speaker, increasing employment opportunities where they are most needed is a key priority of this Assembly. We need to connect our labour force with the available public service jobs across the NWT. As part of our Workforce Planning Strategy, the Department of Human Resources is developing a Regional Recruitment Program. It will incorporate unique approaches to recruitment with on-the-job training so that people across the North have opportunities to be supported in their development as public servants.

The GNWT actively recruits Northerners to fill vacant positions, especially in the...