Michael McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks to all the Members for their comments and the issues they’ve brought forward. The first one being, of course, the discussion around some of the demolition projects we have going. We have a budget of $3.2 million to take down two fairly large buildings; buildings that we’re still paying for the safety issues on them. That’s a big reason to move forward in fairly short order to eliminate any of the public safety concerns. There are also contaminants in some of these facilities that we have to make sure we deal with. There is still a certain cost to have all those...

Mr. Chairman, we’re looking at the change, and the change is as a result of a net change to the amortization expense of $94,000.

I do, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, we’ll have our TSC expert here speak on some of the more specific detail as to what we have done and what will be happening.

Mr. Chairman, we see this investment as a positive move; we see this as an ability to open up new office space. We also have had discussions with the people that the Member is referring to. The Member is aware, I believe, that the people who are going to have the available office space are building a new building to put the very offices that they have into this new office space. So there’s been discussion. I think most of the major players in Yellowknife are aware and have had some discussion at least with the concept if not some of the detail. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, yes, we took that into consideration. Thank you.

Yes, Mr. Chairman, right now we’re at the planning stage. We have, I believe, some money earmarked towards that in a supp and we have looked at a number of options in terms of sites and have looked at building size and things of that nature, but we’re still fairly early in the review.

It’s not something we can do on our own, but we certainly can have the different departments have that kind of discussion with all the different areas that need investment, and the growing concerns of usage and support, and security and compliance, and all the different factors. But it’s very difficult for me to say, yes, we’ll provide a cap. A lot of departments have requirements that would be affected. So we can look at the possible options. We can commit to having discussions with our colleagues and also have that with committee if that’s the desire.

We’ve done over 300 buildings across the North with the thermo-scanning and it’s provided us some pretty good information. We’ve also looked at doing energy audits and we’ve done a number of facilities in the Member’s riding.

In terms of the gravel supply and coordination from Public Works, we do upgrade our assessments twice a year and we have had some very good success in a lot of the communities in terms of acquiring gravel and savings through economies of scale, partnering up with government departments -- Housing Corporation and others -- and it’s also allowed the communities to provide...

Mr. Chairman, we’ve been making some investment in the community for the last number of years and as recent as 2008 when we expanded the tank farm from up to five large tanks. It is a site that’s most suitable for the tank farm.

It would be a fairly expensive, fairly significant investment that would be required to move the facility. We certainly can have that discussion with the community, but right now we have no plans in place to relocate the tank farm. We can have that discussion as we tour the Sahtu and his communities. I believe we’re going there in April sometime.