Rylund Johnson

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'd like to continue the conversation the Member of Kam Lake was having about what housing authorities and LHOs do. I think, you know, a fair characterization of our LHOs is that they are property management companies; they are responsible for the maintenance of the units, and they are responsible for the intake. But they have no control over policies. That is directed to them by the Housing Corp. They are agents of the policies of the Housing Corp. They're not capable of doing anything that the Housing Corp does not want.

So it kind of seems to me that an odd thing to...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I don't want to get into specifics of each of these carryovers, but I'll notice that these are all software carryovers and I know a lot of them have been carried over for years. I think ECE has been carrying over this educator certification one for a lot of years now. And I know sometimes you get a contractor for IT and then they don't do the work and then you get a new one. Sometimes software expires, and then you have to anyways.

My question is, is I struggle to know whether these projects well, I know that none of them are really on time and on track, that's why we...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That's news to me. I'm glad to hear that we will be adopting NBC 2020.

I guess my understanding though, is we don't actually adopt it wholesale; we just adopt the small section of it that applies to fire prevention and then the fire marshal approves that. The rest of it is kind of left up to municipalities.

Also in one of the exemptions that a number of jurisdictions are exploring is whether buildings of four to six stories need two stairwells. I know this is a highly technical exemption but a number of jurisdictions have said that if you get rid of the second stairwell...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Okay, so I do have questions, then.

So we're carrying over about $550,000 of the $1.5 million, meaning the Department of Infrastructure lapsed about a million dollars of deferred maintenance. And I guess my understanding of this happens is because they don't have the contracts in place so they can't say we're absolutely have either a contractual commitment or significant progress under the Financial Administration Manual is why it lapses. But I guess can we get a bit of an explanation of why that happened?

Because I know that the GNWT's deferred maintenance backlog is...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in every other jurisdiction in Canada, I can stand up in the House and ask a Minister what exemptions, what changes, and how the National Building Code applies in that jurisdiction except the Northwest Territories, Mr. Speaker.

Right now, the answer to whether the National Building Code applies in the Northwest Territories is something like "part of it", "somewhere", "sometimes", Mr. Speaker. And we know this. We know this because we have sued ourselves over it, and we know this because there are numerous contractual disputes about when and how the code...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Can I just confirm that Sissons is still on track and ready to be opened for the next school season? Thank you.

Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. And I guess one of the prime examples is that in the publiclytabled documents, there's nothing for the Municipal and Community Affairs, but I believe that the entirety of the community infrastructure budget for Municipal and Community Affairs is being lapsed. And I really don't believe we didn't give them their money. So if someone can illustrate any of what's going on with MACA as lapsing. Thank you.

Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. This was one of my continued frustrations with how we do this, is all of the briefing materials we are provided are not public so I actually am not allowed to refer to them or speak to them. Would we be able to make that table, which shows the difference of carryover versus cash flow, public? Thank you.

Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. So I'm just going to say $125 million. About $125 million in lapsed funding which, my understanding, carryovers mean, you know, if something got delayed and we just have put it into the next another fiscal year, a future fiscal year, but we're still planning this spending whereas a lapse means it's no longer approved by the Cabinet or the legislature and so it may never come back, or it would have to rego through the process.

One of the problems I have is that when you look at what's actually tabled, it's not really clear and you're not really able to figure out...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess I just want to speak in support about how helpful I would find some sort of database of all the current projects and some sort of status to look at.

It would also be my dream, as I've spoken about before, we approve capital projects and when we do that, we are not allowed to say the total cost of the project. But the minute that we are allowed to say that, if such database could include that information so I don't have to come back and keep asking how much a project costs to get the public figure out eventually. And I know sometimes you could do that by going...