Glen Abernethy

The Harassment Free and Respectful Workplace Policy has steps that we go through including mediation, counselling and all those types of things. I’m not sure that what the Member is suggesting would exactly work within the policy, although I do recognize that there is some value to that. Rather than committing to putting it in the policy, I will work with committee, I will work with Members, I will with Education, Culture and Employment. I’m interested to hear what PSAC and the UNW have to say on how we can actually address this issue. It may or may not be appropriate in this policy, so I won...

Thank you. This is an interdepartmental responsibility; Public Works and Services, Transportation, MACA and communities also have an opportunity to work together to coordinate their gravel needs. We would be identifying our gravel needs for buildings and infrastructure that we are responsible for. DOT would do the same and those change from year to year depending on the needs of communities, DOT, Public Works and Services. We have worked together with communities and we have worked together with other departments to coordinate the delivery of granular supply where required. So it’s a...

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

When situations like that arise, and if they arise, we are always happy to look at our contract to see what provisions exist with respect to payments to ensure that work is done in a timely fashion. If work is not done we are happy to hold back payment.

This utilities line covers electricity, fuel, water, garbage, sewage. I think that’s it. So far, like I said, in previous years we’ve had enough money to cover that. This year is going to be tight. We know with the spike in electricity costs that we’ll be pushing it and we will be coming to committee with a request for additional money to help us support the spike in electricity costs.

Before I answer the second part of the question, I’d just like to indicate that the policy does work when it comes to reporting individuals who have experienced harassment issues. We feel the policy actually works quite well. We’ve had a number of investigations. We’ve had a lot of mediations and other resolutions as a result of this policy, so it is helping our employees. But I do feel that the Member is correct. There are some challenges with getting more information out there and helping with prevention and promotion rather than just being responsive, so we will continue to work on that.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, we’d be interested in having those discussions and see what opportunities exist between our departments, Housing Corp and other organizations, where appropriate. We’d be interested in having those conversations.

In the 16 communities where we’re responsible for fuel, we own the tanks, facilities and fuel itself. As far as the delivery agent, the person in the community who is going to deliver it for us, we do a request for proposal and have community representatives and people from the North submit proposals on the price that they feel they can be the distributor of this product using our facilities for it. It’s basically coming from an RFP open, competitive, public process.

I would suggest that payment schedules are negotiated between our primary and their subcontractors. We don’t have a position on that subcontract.

That occurred in the previous Assembly, and I think as an MLA I remember having some discussions about that exact topic. If I remember correctly, the response at that time was that they made an effort to do an assessment of usage and costs, and transfer over the full amount. Can we say we got the full amount? In reality, hard to say, but they indicated they were going to do a full assessment to try to determine the costs and transfer over what was required to continue to pay the bills moving forward.