Michael McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It’s always good to hear kind remarks about some of the work we’ve been taking on.

There are a number of things that we’ve focused on this time around as we brought our budget forward. We’ve really tried to focus our reductions on areas that we felt would avoid cutbacks to programs or program areas — some of the statutory requirements and programs that are scheduled to sunset or had significant concerns from the Members of this House. It’s also allowed us, in our new initiatives, to bring some investment to an area of real concern, and that is deferred maintenance. We...

Mr. Chairman, the intent of providing the service to the community would be…. If, while we’re in the community and doing our own facilities and buildings, the community was interested in us doing the scan on any of their buildings, we would provide that at no cost. Should a request come in for us to specifically come in to do scans on any building that’s owned by a community, we would expect them to pay for our travel costs but not the actual scanning.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, we have a total of roughly $7.5 million in our budget to start working on the deferred maintenance issues. We plan to have that as an ongoing program. This amount would give us the ability to deal with around ten buildings per year.

Yes, Mr. Chairman. With me today to present the Public Works and Services Main Estimates is Mike Aumond, the deputy minister, on my right; and on my left is John Gabel, director of the Technology Service Centre.

I am pleased to present the Department of Public Works and Services Main Estimates for the fiscal year 2008–2009. The Main Estimates propose the department operations and maintenance budget for 2008–2009 of $57.8 million, which represents an 11.6 per cent increase in O&M funding over 2007–2008. In addition, the department has an infrastructure investment plan of $12.1 million for 2008–2009.

Position changes for Public Works and Services include the hiring of eight new apprentices in Fort Smith, Hay River, Fort Simpson, Inuvik and Norman Wells in designated trade occupations. An energy...

  As indicated, we still have a considerable amount of time to deal with a number of issues that are not, maybe, at the top of our list, as some Members would like to see.

The volunteer sector and Volunteer NWT, I think, are two separate issues at this point. We are still investing in the volunteer sector. We don't have any money to provide core funding to Volunteer NWT. We would like to take a step back and start looking at this issue and look at all the issues of interest to the volunteer sector and make sure that each department across the government is involved and that we provide...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think, first of all, we should be clear on who has cut funding to Volunteer NWT. We never did provide any core funding to Volunteer NWT. We had an arrangement with the federal government and Volunteer NWT to be partners on a number of initiatives. The core funding came through the federal government’s funding sources. A couple of years ago that funding lapsed and was not going to be renewed. Our investment in Volunteer NWT was on specific small initiatives.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I believe the grant-in-kind is the contribution, or the recognition of the contribution, made for Rockhill Apartments, which has now been transferred over to the Department of Health.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We certainly agree with the comments that were made by the Members.

The issue of pilings has been something that has proven to be very expensive in the last while, as we've experienced change in our climate. We're starting to see a lot of our buildings in the northern end of our territory having problems with pilings. It has forced us to do a lot of work to rectify the situation and look at different ways to try to avoid using the wood pilings that have been causing us problems.

The comments about fuel being expensive, and concern about the supply this winter is...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The issue of deferred maintenance has become very serious in the last while. This is one of the first years we’ve had a budget line to address any of the issues. The number of buildings that need attention is growing.

As an attempt to try to deal with the many issues that are challenging our capital process and capital investment, we are convinced that having at least the schematics and a design that’s fairly standard available for the communities and for most of our infrastructure…. We’re finding that, for example, we have water plants across the Northwest Territories...