Tom Beaulieu

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Fort Providence Senior Citizens Home is definitely in the inventory of government; however, it is in the inventory of the NWT Housing Corporation. I believe that the Housing Corporation does work with the Dehcho Health and Social Services Authority to provide some services. The senior citizens home in Fort Providence is not a long-term care facility. It’s an independent living facility. I’m going to have to get some information from the Housing Corporation on what type of security is provided to the residents there. Thank you.

I would like to introduce a couple of people in the gallery. Steve Loutitt is director of road licensing and safety for the Department of Transportation, and Anita Merritt is his friend visiting us from Alberta.

Thank you. We have a guy that is going to be living in Tulita right throughout the entire winter road season who works for us. He’s a fairly senior individual in the Department of Transportation. He’ll be working with two monitors also out of the Fort Simpson office and we’ll be doing some debriefing at the end of the winter road to see what is needed. I think it’s at that point that the department has indicated that there may be certainly a look at our base. We have a certain amount of money in the base and that requires the contractor to grade at certain intervals and sometimes there’s a lot...

As I indicated, we had received some money from industry to work on the winter roads in the Sahtu. We also hired two supervisors that are monitoring the roads to make sure that if the roads got too rough that they will be reporting it and we will try to pay some additional attention to that.

After driving the road, we also had discussions internally at the department to see if we shouldn’t come back to the government for more money to be put into the base to put on the winter road. We do think it’s needed; it’s fairly rough. We’re getting quite a few complaints from industry, people going in...

The Department of Transportation has identified the Yellowknife governance as a project that we should be reviewing. This review of the governance at the Yellowknife Airport is going to be done under the Refocusing Government Initiative by this government. We’re going to look at the management options at the airport so that we’ll review all the options. The Department of Transportation is working with Finance to look at these. We’ve also hired a consultant to specifically look at all of these for consideration, probably by the next government.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If the committee wishes to have the department appear, then we would go through the regular process of appearing in front of committee specific on these items.

I suppose there would be two different categories of assets. Assets that are left by a lessee on the property site, the disposal of those assets is laid out in the lease how the disposal of assets is determined. If assets are left behind, it’s laid out in the lease so that it falls under that responsibility. The disposal of assets that are owned by the government and how we dispose of that, we go through the regular process of providing the asset to Public Works for disposal and Public Works will determine if no other government department would be using that asset or need that asset, then it...

Thank you Madam Chair. One of the areas that do take time is due process. It’s in the Public Service Act, and now we are looking at modernizing the Public Service Act to streamline that specific process of the appeal. The Member is correct; from the time the advertisement goes out until the actual job offer is made is a long period because we allow for the appeal process.

So, recognizing that, we are looking at reviewing or modernizing the Public Service Act so that would take a lot less time. Perhaps the deputy minister can also offer some assurance on the process and what other practices we...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, we will be working with the community to install the bridge. The bridge is in Inuvik, as the Member indicated. There are also piles that have to be ordered and installed in order to place the bridge on, and that’s also going to be happening on this winter road.

Thank you, Madam Chair. In the ‘13-14 actuals it was a process where we didn’t spend the money that was in the budget. So if we go back to the mains from the previous year, the mains of ‘13-14 would be more in line with the mains from ‘14-15 and the mains from ‘15-16, but the actuals indicate that we didn’t spend all the money. There was an opportunity in that area where we had passive restraint, so we didn’t spend the money. That’s why it reflects the difference, the large difference there.