Glen Abernethy

The departments have been working together on trying to solve some of these issues and having some consistency across the government. The shared procurement services is obviously going to help a significant amount with the exact concerns that the Member and vendors in the public have brought forward. We do have a procurement procedures committee that has been put in place that has members from Public Works and Services, Finance, and other departments that are trying to come up with some of the challenges that are out there. There is also the comptroller general who is working on this as well...

Mr. Chair, we provide technical advice to departments on building status, building condition, which is part of figuring out what the deferred maintenance is and figuring out what work needs to be done on a regular basis.

But the priorities come from the departments themselves on what items are going to fall into the capital plan. Once an item is in the capital plan, there’s often a planning study that’s required. We participate in those planning studies, but the needs of the department come from the department in a sense, and then we help with operational plans and functional design and...

This government is committed to getting positions outside of the headquarters into some of the regions. I’m not completely sure how taking positions out of one region and putting them in the other would be good for employment in that region. It may affect some of our staff. But I will commit to continuing to push this issue to find out what types of positions we can locate out of Public Works and Services in the Sahtu, if any. As new positions come forward, we will certainly consider the Sahtu as a location for positions.

We have been talking about devolution and those types of things and about...

With respect to the Colville water plant, I understand that MACA is fully engaged on that file and is working with the community. I don’t really have too much to add on that, but I hear the Member’s point about community knowledge when we’re involved in any sort of infrastructure support.

Going back to the water, we are obviously providing technical support to MACA and the community as they work forward. I hear the Member’s comments about getting knowledge from the community and I think we try to do that. Maybe we need to continue to get a little bit more information there. We do have Public...

Just by way of example, automotive gasoline in our 16 communities ranges right now, based on our current pricing structure in place, from $1.48 per litre up to and including $1.80 per litre. If we were to attempt to do some levelling there, we would see some communities go up noticeably. We would see other communities go down significantly. With our revolving fund to cover those types of differences to level things out, we would start to eat through our revolving fund, which is dangerous. We have to make sure we keep a certain amount in that revolving fund to cover our costs as costs change.

Th...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Absolutely.

Yes, we will provide that to the Member and committee.

The Harassment Free and Respectful Workplace Policy has steps that we go through including mediation, counselling and all those types of things. I’m not sure that what the Member is suggesting would exactly work within the policy, although I do recognize that there is some value to that. Rather than committing to putting it in the policy, I will work with committee, I will work with Members, I will with Education, Culture and Employment. I’m interested to hear what PSAC and the UNW have to say on how we can actually address this issue. It may or may not be appropriate in this policy, so I won...

Thank you. This is an interdepartmental responsibility; Public Works and Services, Transportation, MACA and communities also have an opportunity to work together to coordinate their gravel needs. We would be identifying our gravel needs for buildings and infrastructure that we are responsible for. DOT would do the same and those change from year to year depending on the needs of communities, DOT, Public Works and Services. We have worked together with communities and we have worked together with other departments to coordinate the delivery of granular supply where required. So it’s a...

Yes, I will get that information to the committee and the Member.