Glen Abernethy

Thank you, Madam Chair. The department administers contracts on a huge scale from small standing offer agreements, sole-sourced contracts for small amounts of money like $25,000, $30,000; $5,000 and up. We also do major builds such as the East Three School and the new office building in Yellowknife. We have change orders on a regular basis on any number of these types of things, these types of contracts.

In particular I can talk a little bit about the teardown for the school in Inuvik. We have a contract which is well within budget. There are going to be some change orders on that building. We...

Thank you, Madam Chair. We are committed as a government, not just as a department, to getting positions decentralized where appropriate, and in the Public Works and Services we did create one new position and we located it in Hay River.

With respect to the Sahtu and Public Works and Services, the Sahtu is actually administered out of our Inuvik office, and we do have employees in Public Works and Services in the Sahtu and we’ll continue to do that. As work increases, we may find that we’re in a position where we have to consider additional resources in the Sahtu, but right now the requirements...

Thank you, Madam Chair. With respect to the Member’s first question, we will put together a more plain-language explanation of what that is so that the Member and committee has a better understanding of what that is.

With respect to the large capital projects and the change from the main estimates to the revised estimates, I will go to the deputy minister, please.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Unfortunately, we go page by page, if the Member were to go a few pages in, he would see that we have done a reorganization within the department. Asset management has gone down, the positions in asset management have moved into the directorate. There is zero change at the bottom line of the department other than some forced growth as a result of salary, UNW levels, but we moved a number of positions that used to be in asset management into the directorate. The increases that the Member is talking about are a direct result of that move, not a change in a giant addition...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thanks to my colleagues for their comments. I will go through them as quickly as I can.

With respect to the Inuvik school, one of the first things I did when I became the Minister, I think it was April 2012, somewhere around there, it was about the time the school was getting ready to open, the Inuvik East Three School there. I saw it as one of the largest projects this government had been working on and I asked the department to do a comprehensive review on that. They have been doing it ongoing throughout the whole process of the build. They have a lot of information...

Madam Chair, there is literally thousands of contracts going on, but I think the Member – and correct me if I’m wrong – is talking about the larger build contracts as opposed to the smaller contracts that we may be administering. As I’ve indicated previously, with the East Three School, by way of example, we will do a complete post-mortem. We are doing a complete post-mortem on that project. It is a significant project. That will certainly be shared with committee and whatnot.

Other projects, ones that are certainly brought up or people are questioning, we are happy to do reviews of those to...

I do, Madam Chair.

Madam Chair, can I get the Member to repeat his question? Is it specific to this project or is it overall? I’m not sure I understood completely.

Thank you. Yes, I’d be, obviously, happy to talk to the RCMP about their history and where some of the historic items may exist. But I would also suggest to the Member that helping people in the Northwest Territories understand our history and the important work that “G” Division has done is only part of it. Getting that information out to other people in the country is important.

“G” Division has a long history that stretches back as the Territories has become a smaller jurisdiction. So there are other individuals outside of what is the Northwest Territories now that have some history with “G”...

That’s what BIP does. Under this particular process, we have to apply BIP, where appropriate, and the contractors or potential contractors, when they’re submitting their bids, must identify the local vendors that they’re going to use in all situations. If they are going to be using local hotels, they have to identify the companies they are using, that they qualify under BIP.

As far as monitoring, we require regular reports from the vendors, the successful proponents on compliance with the contract that we sign with them, which makes specific reference to the individuals they would have...