Glen Abernethy

We’re responsible for the lifecycle, the maintenance, the ongoing monitoring of the buildings. We do the maintenance on boilers and whatnot where the buildings are our responsibility. We’re responsible for the general upkeep on the buildings that we own. We can track and monitor that stuff. If we’ve noticed a spike, we would certainly explore that and try to determine what was the cause of the spike, whether it was a system-related spike or whether it was an operations-related spike. If there’s an operations-related spike we could certainly talk to a department to figure out what’s going on to...

We believe things are working quite well with the assets management with respect to utilities. We’re able to provide real great reporting. We can show usage. We can do all the tracking, and we’ve got the budget to cover it. I don’t believe it’s causing any undue stress or problems with departments, but if committee wants to direct us to do that analysis, we’re happy to consider it.

I missed the other part of the question.

If you go back into the history of wood pellets in use by the Government of the Northwest Territories, we’ve tended to respond to where a market is already started. If you look at how we got involved in pellets in the first place, it was with the correctional facilities here in Yellowknife where a vendor came to us and made a suggestion to have them put in the boilers and be the, I guess, administrators of the heating system.

From there, once we’ve seen success and we know we have a supply, we’ve been able to expand to where supply exists. We, I wouldn’t say are leading the drive for pellets in...

As I have indicated, we’ve been doing the other two authorities for five years or more, and they fit pretty much exactly in a similar capacity to the other departments that we are responsible for as well.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We’re continually looking for ways to improve our processes and practice in the Government of the Northwest Territories, in particular in Public Works and Services. To that end, I’ve set up regular meetings with the Architects and Construction Association as well as the chambers of commerce, in order to get continual feedback and input from them on different processes in the Government of the Northwest Territories.

With respect to input from some of the subs that may be utilized in contracts, we’d be open to hearing anything they have to say. We do deal with the primary...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It’s in the budget of Public Works and Services.

The difference, as the deputy minister indicated, is in one situation the TSC, we are providing a service to a client department, as opposed to with the buildings we have the mandate to operate and maintain those facilities. They happen to have a client department in them. In some of our buildings we’ve got multiple departments, and it would be very difficult to start identifying who’s responsible for what percentage of power. We operate and maintain those buildings. We, therefore, like any landlord, would be responsible for making sure that the juice was on and that the fluids were flowing.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. There have been a number of questions brought up about this exact topic in the past. Previous to the new regulations coming in, we were meeting and exceeding, and often beating the national code. New codes have come in, and we’re still in that area, but for specifics on numbers and some of the specific details, I will go to the deputy minister.

Mr. Chair, chargeback rates have been established in the Government of the Northwest Territories by the TSC and we use those chargeback rates for the authority.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This is, obviously, a bigger question than one department can respond to. It’s going to take all the departments looking at their operations, figuring out what responsibilities exist, what responsibilities would be appropriate to decentralizing or moving to communities. We also have devolution coming, which is going to bring a significant number of positions into the public service.

We have already committed, as a government, to working with our colleagues, working with communities, to get some of these new positions to the Government of the Northwest Territories outside...