Tom Beaulieu

Mr. Speaker, with the amount of employees that we have and the hours of operation and start-up time and shutdown time, the barrier is the Canadian Labour Code. They only allow an individual doing that type of work to work a maximum of 60 hours. With the shifts, I think we’re very close to that. Adding an extra hour means that individuals will be over that time allotment. That is the barrier right now, so I don’t know what the alternative would be.

The department does buy all fuel at wholesale. We do try to look for the best wholesale price. Having said that, I am not able to answer the Member’s question. I don’t have the information of what our anticipated fuel costs would be going into the future.

What we do is we have the trends that we recognize that fuel goes up and down on a daily basis and then slowly inching upward, but we recognize that the wholesale purchase this year compared to the wholesale purchase last year was substantially higher this year. Therefore, there were increases of up to 19 cents, 20 cents on a litre of gasoline...

Another method that the department is using, the Department of Public Works, we are trying to become anchor tenants in a lot of the communities where it’s not feasible for individual companies to have a biomass presence. What we’re trying to do as we make our units more energy efficient, we’re introducing biomass in some of our buildings so that there is some volume there for an individual to be able to… A business can be created in the small community where biomass becomes feasible for them as the distributor into a community because they would have a good anchor tenant as in the Government...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We do this in a couple of ways. For communities that are under the petroleum products division where we are providing fuel, we only charge to the individuals the cost of the fuel plus a commission plus the transportation of the fuel. In situations where we have, in the middle of winter, a sharp increase like we had seen last February, we use the Stabilization Fund that we use to run the PPD as a division to make sure that we keep the prices stable until after the winter season, and we use up some of that Stabilization Fund in order to do that.

As the Member indicated, there was a competition held. We had offered the position to an individual who was in another community. The individual had requested a desire to remain in their community. We had looked at the numbers to see if something was possible for the individual to remain in the community. Initial numbers we had looked at indicate that the position would be best to remain in Hay River. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I give notice that on Wednesday, June 4, 2014, I will move that Bill 30, An Act to Amend the Public Service Act, be read for the first time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. [English translation not provided.]

Today I would like to pay tribute to the late Michael Eugene Bridgman of Lutselk’e, who passed away on March 31, 2014. Mike was the husband of Debra Bridgman and had two daughters, Chantyle and Sarah, who lived down south in Ontario. Mike had six grandchildren, a brother named Randy and two stepsons, Michael and Paul.

Mike was born in St. Thomas, Ontario, July 6, 1951, and spent the majority of his working years working for the Ford Motor Company where he was a welder and in assembly, and he spent 30 years doing that.

Mike believed in...

I’m not familiar with how many employees that were on the Merv Hardie at Fort Providence is at this time and how they worked the hours to get all of the individuals that are working at this time into those hours and still stay within the allowable codes for the Canadian Labour Code. I would have to investigate what had occurred at that point back in the Merv Hardie so that we were able to run that. I understand that some of the difference could be the fact that the ferry had to run longer, so we made compensation by adding employees due to the volume of traffic in Fort Providence.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’ve had the regional superintendent from Transportation meet with the chief and council. They wish to meet and discuss the hours of operation of the Lafferty ferry. Also, we’ve looked at what hours are possible for the operation that we have and the employees we have on the ferry. Thank you.

The Department of Public Works is responsible for providing fuel, heating fuel to communities where there are no other individuals that find it feasible to provide that product to the people. So in communities where our department is providing fuel, we do that and it’s just at a cost basis. There is no actual increase to the charge of fuel other than just to get it into the community and provide it to the individuals. We do have some charge that’s in the Stabilization Fund. That is something that I had indicated earlier that that type of stabilization fund is then used to support the...