Tom Beaulieu

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On the deferred maintenance, yes, when an asset is sold and no longer is usable, it’s beyond economical repair, then we replace it. At the point we replace it our deferred maintenance does drop, but we would immediately start to accumulate deferred maintenance on a new building. So, slowly, if we’re able to renew our buildings for the most part, then we would continue to chip away at the deferred maintenance but we could never get the deferred maintenance right down to nothing, as an example. As soon as a building is new and is introduced as an asset for the Government...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To my left is the deputy minister of Public Works and Services, Paul Guy; and to my right, director of TSC, Laurie Gault.

That’s exactly what we intend to do. We have various categories, like I indicated, positions that require university degrees as an example, and positions that require trades, a position that requires college, as an example. We are developing plans in Human Resources to start looking at the various job categories, so we’d look at the job categories and determine how we can best fill those job categories.

I’m having a lot of discussions with the deputy of HR and we in turn are trying to put a plan together, are putting a plan together, not trying, and then I intend to discuss each of these plans...

Mr. Speaker, this was a job fair that occurred in Ottawa that was a bit controversial the last time we were in the Assembly. I got the information and looked at it, and the one thing I don’t have but could present to the Member no problem, or to the House, would be the cost of that. That’s not an issue. We can determine the cost of that fairly simply.

What I am saying is that we were able to get the five positions. Exactly where those five individuals came to work, I don’t know. My guess is, a 50 percent guess would be that they probably ended up in Yellowknife because the vacancy rate in the...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think that we will try to provide some detail. We have done a lot of work in energy efficiency on the midlife retrofits. Each time we’ve done that we’ve tried to be as energy efficient as possible, and biomass. We have a Capital Asset Retrofit Fund which is just savings from the operation of the buildings that we’re doing, so eventually as we do more buildings, we’re getting more savings, so that budget just continues to grow as we continue to do more buildings, and we’re saving a lot of money in fuel and we’re reducing greenhouse gases substantially from the...

We recognize that the population in the Northwest Territories has dropped, but in the GNWT, from the last time we were able to print the PeopleSoft report, which was October 2013, and the next time we were able to print the PeopleSoft report, April 2014, we had a decrease in the overall vacancy rate.

The Member is right; the overall vacancy rate back then was 1,150. I gave various reasons as to where those positions lagged, but that number has gone down to 1,031 at this point. So we have decreased that number by approximately 120 persons and that vacancy rate number. Now, that 1,030 are spread...

Mr. Chair, I would indicate to the Member that we will look at the regular process if a decision is made to go back to providing a services shop in Tsiigehtchic in the future. We would certainly put it through the regular process.

Thank you. Not all of those jobs are advertised at the same time, but they are in the process at some stage. Some of them could be at the point when the departments are putting together the information needed to go to advertisement. Some will be in advertisement. Some will be in the interview process and some will be at the offer stage and some could be at the appeal stage. So, this is a flow through. So, if 70 jobs are advertised at one point, I would say that’s a sufficient number to correlate with the numbers I’d given the Member earlier. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We would be pleased to do the communications with the community, keeping the community advised on how things are moving forward, getting their input, consulting with them and, of course, also working with the Department of Health and Social Services as we will as a government go together to consult to ensure that what the community wants is what the community gets.

Thank you. The issue with the land and location has been resolved. I don’t know the exact location, but perhaps the deputy minister can add to this in a minute.

As far as the communications, we will work with the department and Health and Social Services to make sure that as the project moves forward, we’re communicating with the leadership in Fort Simpson.