Tom Beaulieu

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Our schedule here shows that this year, this fiscal year that we’re in, we had put some money in the budget to work on the PWS shop. So our understanding is that work was completed. So if it’s not then we will get to the department and back to the Member to find out what may have occurred. We’re surprised to hear that nothing had happened. That’s because it was approved in the budget the last fiscal year.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Our PeopleSoft is essentially a snapshot, but the numbers are fairly static throughout the year. So at the point when we did the last print off on PeopleSoft, the last time it was able to give us our semi-annual information, we had 244 jobs that the government was pursuing to fill and 281 jobs that were scheduled to be filled within a short time after that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We had some negotiations but the land issues have been resolved. Perhaps if the Member wants some detail on some of the issues we may have had or how we were working with the Department of Health, I’ll ask that the deputy minister respond to the Member.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We are working closely with the Department of Health and Social Services and the RFP for the planning study will be going out very soon. It was scheduled to go out this fall, but we’re getting close to winter here, but it’s scheduled to go out very soon.

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...