Tom Beaulieu

The senior citizens home in Fort Providence does have a live-in caretaker who is on shift during the evening from 10:00 until 3:00 at night which provides some security. During the day, Fort Providence has some home care workers who do go into the facility. The home care services are provided primarily by nurses who come into the home and support from other professionals such as physicians and occupational therapists from time to time that go into the facility.

As far as the reconstruction or renovations needed at the home, I’m not aware of the status of that particular project at this time...

Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to return to item 6, on the Order Paper.

---Unanimous consent granted

It is an odd-looking bridge and sort of in the middle of nowhere. The bridge was put in and then they had some issues on the approach of the bridge. It’s quite high and so on. The department is looking at it now. It’s been there for quite a while, but what we are talking about is trying to go to… I think we were initially advised by elders to move it I believe it’s 1.8 kilometres up that creek, and then that would be where we’d have to realign the winter road. So we’re looking at the cost of that. The cost of that is fairly substantial, but at the same time if we don’t do it, then we would...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In previous years we did get some additional funds to do the winter road from industry. So when there was some activity in and around Norman Wells, we received an additional $400,000 annually from industry to support us with a road that led from about where the road gets rough where the Sahtu/Deh Cho line is up to Norman Wells. This year we didn’t get that money until we were able to negotiate a separate deal for less than that from industry. Thank you.

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.