Glen Abernethy

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This is, obviously, a bigger question than one department can respond to. It’s going to take all the departments looking at their operations, figuring out what responsibilities exist, what responsibilities would be appropriate to decentralizing or moving to communities. We also have devolution coming, which is going to bring a significant number of positions into the public service.

We have already committed, as a government, to working with our colleagues, working with communities, to get some of these new positions to the Government of the Northwest Territories outside...

I’ll go to the deputy minister as he’s got the information right in front of him.

Mr. Chair, we provide technical advice to departments on building status, building condition, which is part of figuring out what the deferred maintenance is and figuring out what work needs to be done on a regular basis.

But the priorities come from the departments themselves on what items are going to fall into the capital plan. Once an item is in the capital plan, there’s often a planning study that’s required. We participate in those planning studies, but the needs of the department come from the department in a sense, and then we help with operational plans and functional design and...

The departments have been working together on trying to solve some of these issues and having some consistency across the government. The shared procurement services is obviously going to help a significant amount with the exact concerns that the Member and vendors in the public have brought forward. We do have a procurement procedures committee that has been put in place that has members from Public Works and Services, Finance, and other departments that are trying to come up with some of the challenges that are out there. There is also the comptroller general who is working on this as well...

Just by way of example, automotive gasoline in our 16 communities ranges right now, based on our current pricing structure in place, from $1.48 per litre up to and including $1.80 per litre. If we were to attempt to do some levelling there, we would see some communities go up noticeably. We would see other communities go down significantly. With our revolving fund to cover those types of differences to level things out, we would start to eat through our revolving fund, which is dangerous. We have to make sure we keep a certain amount in that revolving fund to cover our costs as costs change.

Th...

This government is committed to getting positions outside of the headquarters into some of the regions. I’m not completely sure how taking positions out of one region and putting them in the other would be good for employment in that region. It may affect some of our staff. But I will commit to continuing to push this issue to find out what types of positions we can locate out of Public Works and Services in the Sahtu, if any. As new positions come forward, we will certainly consider the Sahtu as a location for positions.

We have been talking about devolution and those types of things and about...

With respect to the Colville water plant, I understand that MACA is fully engaged on that file and is working with the community. I don’t really have too much to add on that, but I hear the Member’s point about community knowledge when we’re involved in any sort of infrastructure support.

Going back to the water, we are obviously providing technical support to MACA and the community as they work forward. I hear the Member’s comments about getting knowledge from the community and I think we try to do that. Maybe we need to continue to get a little bit more information there. We do have Public...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Absolutely.

Yes, we will provide that to the Member and committee.

Yes, I will get that information to the committee and the Member.