Tom Beaulieu

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To my immediate right is Paul Guy, deputy minister of Public Works and Services; to my far right is Laurie Gault, director of the Technology Service Centre; to my left, Steve Lewis, director of corporate services. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased to present the Department of Public Works and Services’ main estimates for the fiscal year 2014-15.

The department’s main estimates propose an operations expenditure budget of $108.9 million for 2014-15, an increase of 4 percent over 2013-14. This increase can be attributed to the following activities:

increased funding to deliver essential support services in the areas of infrastructure operations, general purpose office accommodations, contracts and records management associated with the devolution of federal programs, and

funding to support the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, we are considering that. We wrote to the contractor. I sent a letter off to the contractor asking if there were any issues or detriments to us following the hours that were suggested by the community of Tsiigehtchic.

Thank you. The PeopleSoft system is designed to give us snapshot reports. We use that as a management tool to hire, track, recruit, retain our employees and this was a snapshot that we provided to the House on October 2013 and we’ll do that again in April of 2014. We act accordingly. We continuously are attempting to fill positions. We work with the departments and it’s important for us that we make every effort to fill the vacancies and we do. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As of February 17, 2014, of the 571 vacant positions, 156 of them were filled and the other ones are in the various processes, currently being filled by transfer assignment or casual while we’re trying to find an incumbent, they were recently vacant or at some point been through the interview stage or the advertising stage or the offer stage. So they’re at the various stages and it would not be possible for us to advertise and fill 571 jobs at one time. Thank you.

I’m going to have the deputy provide detail on the maintenance portion of deferred maintenance.

I’m not expecting to put the Merv Hardie into service, so anything that may be done with the Merv Hardie will only be done when we plan to put it into service. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I spoke about the procurement shared services. Those were transferred in from other departments for this procurement shared services that is under Public Works now.

Mr. Speaker, I have talked to the department and the ferry will be ready to go when it’s in the water. It will be fully repaired and fully functional. Thank you.

Those were dollars.