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.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Legislative authority would have to be changed. The step would be to amend the ATIPP Act and the Public Service Act. Thank you.

Thank you. Generally the winter roads operate in a certain time period. We track the average times in which the roads remain open. As far as the operations costs of the road, these are all done by contract. So we sign the contract with a company to do a certain part of the winter road and we stay with that contract, and that contract is intended to provide services from the time the road opens until the road closes. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. For communication purposes, we’ve communicated, when we saw that the weather was warming up a bit, a possibility of reducing heavy traffic to night traffic, but at this time there are no restrictions. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. No, I don’t. Thank you.