Glen Abernethy

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On my right I have Sylvia Haener, who is the deputy minister of the Department of Justice. On my left I have Kim Schofield, who is the director of finance of the Department of Justice.

Mr. Speaker, the government is committed to being an inclusive workplace open to all Northerners. A diverse workplace improves our ability to serve the public.

Today I would like to provide Members with highlights from the recent Inclusive Public Service Survey, conducted by the NWT Bureau of Statistics on behalf of the Department of Human Resources. It was developed in consultation with the GNWT Advisory Committee on Employability. The survey was conducted in the first half of this year, and asked all GNWT employees to share their perspectives on a wide range of workplace diversity topics. The...

I do, thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Madam Chair. We are intending to use the facilities, the new building, to help provide heat or to provide heat to the two existing buildings. It is the Stuart Hodgson Building and the Laing Building. We will save 785 tonnes of greenhouse gases annually by the option that we have selected, biomass for the new building.

The Member has mentioned the district heating and any options that we have there. I said it before, I will say it again, we haven’t finalized the plans. We still have a small window where we can switch to, in construction, a district heating. If it was to come forward...

If the question was as simple as that, it wouldn’t be that hard to agree. There’s more to it than that and the Member knows that.

We can put the pellets in, but until people start purchasing and have the money to actually put in their own pellet heating systems – which we all know a pellet boiler in a house is probably $20,000 even with the subsidies that are available through organizations like Arctic Energy Alliance – many people in the small communities aren’t going to be able to afford those anyway. We need to work with the communities to help them create a market. When the demand is there...

Thank you, Madam Chair. When individual departments defer maintenance, this is when we utilize the Deferred Maintenance Program. By deferring maintenance, I’m referring to the fact where the practice of postponing maintenance activities such as repairs on buildings and infrastructure in order to save costs meet funding levels or realign the available funding. During the lifecycle of a building, usually about halfway through the midlife, there’s a requirement to do some major upgrades and make sure that everything is up to date and running fast, and that the building needs are still meeting the...

Madam Chair, we own the lot that the Tapwe Building was on previously. We are using that property and the property that we obtained where there used to be an old church. We obtained those properties, so we are responsible for, and the price of taking down the Tapwe Building, decommissioning it, disposing of it, is included in this budget.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m listening closely and I believe we are wanting to get to the same place, the Member and I. I think we have slightly different opinions on how to get there.

This department and the government are focusing on supporting the demand, helping to create demand. We are becoming purchasers of pellet boilers and other biomass product on a regular basis.

The Department of Public Works and Services is an active member participating on the development of a Biomass Strategy. We are focusing much of our investment on actually utilizing the product and creating demand in the...

For this budget the fund is $1.2 million, which is up significantly from last year. These dollars, as I’ve explained in the past, are based on savings that we’ve received from putting different assets and doing different projects. We expect and hope this fund will continue to grow, and the money for this fund is purely from savings.

We do have some breakdowns of some previous year work. The current year work hasn’t been completely finalized, and that will help build the fund for the previous year.

I will commit to getting the Member and committee a breakdown of the types of activities we’ve...

I’m not sure where that particular number of the market comes from, or the GNWT’s construction. We build a wide variety of types of buildings. Speciality buildings have different costs than other more generalized buildings. I do have to say that this building is being built to a high standard. We have certain codes within the GNWT that we, as a government, have already accepted as far as building practices, efficiencies. This is going to be a state-of-the-art building. We have gone out for an open competition. We have gone to the market and these are the prices that have come in. We are...