Tom Beaulieu

Thank you, Mr. Chair. No, that’s not what we’re saying. Safety is still an important part of our work. We are not going to abandon all of the safety programs or anything we have in place for safety. That’s not what we’re saying. What we are saying is, if we develop hard rules saying that individual contractors have to have certain types of specific safety certifications in order to be on our jobsites today, then we will have eliminated the majority of people that are doing contracting in the Northwest Territories today.

So what we are doing is we are working with industry to roll out this...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased to present the 2015-2016 Main Estimates for the Department of Public Works and Services. Overall, the department’s estimates propose an increase of $5.1 million, or 4.4 percent, over the 2014-2015 Main Estimates. These estimates continue to support the objectives of limiting expenditure growth in order to sustain the long-term sustainability of the fiscal framework.

Highlights of the proposed estimates include:

an interdepartmental transfer of $6.1 million associated with the consolidation of the government’s energy functions, along with associated...

Yes, that is correct.

Counting both senior and regular management, we have about 80 Aboriginal women in management. The corporate nature of the GNWT, we have lots of women in management. Fifty percent of our deputy ministers are women.

What happens is when we become specific to how we’re going to fill positions, we always have affirmative action. The Affirmative Action Program looks at indigenous Aboriginal and also looks at women, who always have a priority. So, indigenous Aboriginal women would have the highest priority, and women also have a priority 1 or priority 2 category in this government. Using the...

Thank you, Madam Chair. We are beginning to move into a lot of safety areas as we continue to work with the Workers’ Safety Commission. We have contracts in place where when a contractor gets on a site, they would have to have a safety plan for the people on site. We don’t believe that WSCC is only there to collect premiums. Actually, we believe that people who are in construction are different than individuals who may be in retail and the requirement for having some safety plan in place on a construction site versus something that just may protect employees against some lighter duty injuries...

Each department in the GNWT is responsible for developing human resource plans. In each human resource plan there is succession planning. So, each of the plans actually identify positions in which they would complete a succession plan for successful individuals within their departments. It is also possible for using transfer assignments to move individuals from one department to another and put them into a succession plan which is intended to move individuals from lower levels into management positions and from management positions into senior management positions. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We have two communities in the Deh Cho that we are delivering fuel to. Nahanni Butte diesel fuel is currently 25 percent complete. The diesel order is about 384,000 litres. We’ve delivered 98,000 litres. In Trout Lake the diesel fuel is 55 percent complete. The order is about 140,000 litres of diesel, and we’ve delivered 62,000 litres of diesel and 49,000 litres of gasoline. We haven’t delivered any of the gasoline that was ordered into Nahanni Butte yet, but we aren’t anticipating any problems at all delivering all of what was ordered.

Mr. Chairman, with that, I will just...

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to recognize the recent and ongoing improvements made by NAV Canada at 17 of our airport sites with community aerodrome radio stations and at Wekweeti and Colville Lake airports.

NAV Canada is the private corporation responsible for civil air navigation services and weather within Canadian airspace. It has recently invested in the weather observation systems at 19 of our airports in the NWT. This improved weather information, now available 24 hours a day and 365 days a year, will support safer and more effective air transportation services for our communities and...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The details on the increase being lower than the amount of money we’ve got from energy, the consolidation of energy services. I’m going to have Director Lewis give the details on the ins and outs. Like the Member indicated, it was a bit of a net decrease once you consider we had an increase in the collective bargaining and then we took on the energy function at $6.1 million, but the overall increase was lower than that. So we’ll have that explanation.

We don’t have the details on carry-overs. All of the carry-overs are based on capital items. So we can provide the...

We would be pleased to provide that information to the Member.