Tom Beaulieu

The Department of Public Works will advise the group of areas where spaces would be available for art display. Like I indicated, there will be a policy developed, and I think that’s going to guide us on whether or not we are displaying art, in which buildings and what pieces of art that we will be displaying. As I indicated, at this point it appears as though the group, the NWT Arts Council, that we’re working with were happy with the display appearing on the television and the TV display system, but because the policy is not finalized, it would be difficult to indicate at this point what art...

Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. After the commitment was made to do this work, a working group consisting of four departments, ECE, ITI, Transportation and Public Works, was put together to work with the NWT Arts Council on making this display of art in GNWT buildings possible.

Mr. Speaker, even though the position is vacant, the job still has to be done. Often the positions are filled with a casual, and also when we have some vacancy rates, we create some money for summer students so we are able to hire summer students. It is very important to us as a government, when these kids are out at university or college, when they come back to the Northwest Territories that we try to employ them so they have a better chance of success when they go back to school. Last year we employed 308 summer students. If we had every position filled to the max all the time and there was...

Mr. Speaker, they are not a secret, so it would be difficult to answer a question that leads with why is it a secret. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, it does matter; I agree. This is a reason why we are trying to put infrastructure into the small communities.

In some of the larger centres, we do have very good employment rates. An example is the employment rate in the city of Yellowknife is over 80 percent; across the country it is 69 percent. The issue is not really because we don’t have infrastructure here, we don’t have infrastructure in the small communities. The low employment numbers in the small communities are due to education and housing and other office space and other infrastructure that’s needed to attract people...

Thank you. The chipsealing will be done this summer during the summer construction season. Once that is completed if there’s a request from committee for us to debrief committee on the contract, then the department is prepared to do that. Thank you.

Thank you. This was a guaranteed negotiated contract. There have been no requests from the contractor for any change order to increase the costs of the work that was done on the Highway No. 4 bypass. Thank you.

Thank you. A public highway is a public highway. Any public highway, once it’s officially opened, is the responsibility of DOT. It’s fairly standard practice to put down the base of the road and not put the chipseal immediately, and in this case there would be driving on it and when it is appropriate and the weather allows, then it will be chipsealed, but up until the chipseal is completed, the contract is still there, but legally, at the time it was opened it became a DOT asset. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. There was not a design issue; the issue was with the installation of the bridge. The bridge was installed and the panels that sit on top the bridge were not totally lined up with the installation of the sides of the bridge. It took some time to make the correction, so that has been corrected. There’s no issue with the safety of the bridge or anything. The corrections have been made and the bridge is now properly installed. Thank you.

Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. The department has developed a Workforce Planning Strategy across the territory that is designed to fill the positions. Currently, we are looking at each of the vacant positions and why the positions are vacant. Many of them are at the community level, and many times we don’t have the infrastructure to fill those positions, so we are examining an example that I brought forward earlier with the regional recruitment where we might be able to fill the position with an individual that would need approximately one year’s worth of trainings using 20 percent of that individual...