Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We do have conversations. We talk about co-located facilities and things that we could do, and we certainly are involved. I’m not sure whether the Member is getting at hiring or having one position shared between. I’m not sure that that’s what she’s getting to. Can I get a little bit more clarity from the Member?
Sure you can. I can try. As I understand it, we have buildings. PWS has assets that need to be maintained and need to be serviced. The Housing Corporation has buildings and has assets that they also need to maintain and service. I know that the Housing Corp hires apprentices and, obviously, PWS does as well, so it would seem to me that there could be a benefit to ensure that we have a settlement maintainer in every community. Maybe we don’t need a full PY settlement maintainer for just PWS, and maybe it’s a job share or whatever, but I’m just wondering if in hiring a certain apprentice are we going to end up with two apprentices in the same trade in a community, which I don’t imagine we would need, certainly, in a small community. That’s the kind of coordination that I’m talking about. It may not be necessary but it would seem to me that there could be an advantage to talking about what kind of services are required, what kind of trades are required, what kind of maintenance is required, and combine the work to maybe provide better service.
There may be some opportunities for some cooperation here, but there are a couple things that we have to remember. Many of the buildings that Public Works and Services manages tend to be larger; schools, jails, office buildings; larger facilities that would require a different skill set than, say, a home, which the Housing Corp may be administering. I’m certainly willing to have that conversation with the Minister responsible for the Housing Corporation to see if there are any advantages, but it may not be as cut and dried as that. Thank you.
That’s all I have.
Thank you. I have Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to pursue this a little bit further. I appreciate the good information here. That was useful.
I guess I’m also looking at it for rate. For example, new litres of fossil fuel saved and the new greenhouse gas reductions by year for the past five years, so that I can see how much of the low-hanging fruit or whatever it is. Ultimately, the cost-benefit return probably starts to shrink a little bit. I would appreciate that to help me assess that, which brings me to the question.
What do we see as our biggest remaining opportunities? I’d say we are close to achieving, soon, 30 percent in our total heat load. That’s pretty good. Hopefully we can go more. What are our next big opportunities?
Another aspect of it is, we really need to reduce our fossil fuel consumption, i.e., greenhouse gas emissions, to some degree, regardless of savings. But we have to be able to afford to do it. That is still a practical indication.
What is the guideline for the department? Are we still stuck in the, maybe not stuck, but I assume we have lots of opportunity yet that would be economic as well as lead to these savings and reductions? Does our guideline allow us to reduce fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions regardless of cost, or maybe not regardless but without a big cost gain? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Abernethy.
Mr. Chair, I would say that there is still a significant opportunity to get financial return on this, which will help us save money. The Capital Asset Retrofit Fund, there is lots of opportunity out there to continue to use technology. It’s not just heating technology; it’s lighting technology, it’s distribution of air, it’s all these types of things that can help reduce our costs. We may eventually hit a point where there may not be as much economic return on some of these, but we will continue to move forward with the savings that we do have.
An example of a community where the savings aren’t going to be financial savings, aren’t going to be as significant as other locations, is Norman Wells with the biomass that we’re putting in, the health centre, the school and the airport. Just the additional cost of getting the product there takes away some of our savings, but it is still worth doing. It is, at this point, still providing us a savings.
As we push out in some of these other communities where we can get supply to, I imagine some of the smaller communities are going to give us less of a return, but we are not just building it for return. There are multiple reasons why we’re doing these types of things. It’s about controlling costs. It’s about greenhouse gas emissions. It’s about better product, better opportunities. So we will continue to move forward.
As far as when we’ll hit that threshold, I can’t say. I don’t know. I would say that we’re still a ways away from that, and there’s still much we can do in the Government of the Northwest Territories before I think we actually hit that threshold the Member is talking about.
Thanks to the Minister for those comments. I know I have seen lots of individual projects where it was sometimes 30 or 40 years return, so I recognize the department has been doing some of that because of some other significant gains.
Would it be possible to get the same sort of information, essentially the 30 percent on heat demand, for our power demand? What is our proportion of power load that is met through renewable energy of whatever source, hydro, thermal and so on? That would be great. Thank you.
Public Works and Services obviously has some responsibility in paying bills and tracking those types of things, but for some more detail on where our power load is coming from, I will go to the deputy minister.
Thank you, Minister Abernethy. Mr. Guy.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. We do track that. A couple of things. Back about two years ago, I think we’re into our third year now where we’ve consolidated maintenance and utilities, so we have now pretty close to three solid years of utility data on all the government assets that we manage. We have that broken down by assets, we have it broken down by fuel type. So the types of information, whether it’s electricity in a hydro community or electricity in a thermal community, we have that information now.
We produce an annual energy report for the department and we tabulate and provide that breakdown, as well, how our energy is consumed, whether it’s electricity in a thermal community or electricity in a hydro community, where it comes from, renewables, and we also do that with our space heating as well. Our intention, as we do our next annual report, is to provide some more of that information in there. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Guy. We’ll go back to Minister Abernethy for comment.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. We’ll certainly provide that information to the Member and committee. Just following up on that and a comment that we made yesterday, Public Works and Services undertakes the following energy management activities, and I believe this question was asked yesterday, but we do energy consumption analysis and benchmarking, we do detailed energy audits and we do inspections of electrical and mechanical systems that are under our responsibility as part of our energy management on existing facilities. So all that type of stuff is out there, as well, but with respect to the numbers, we will get those to the Member and committee.
Thank you, Minister Abernethy. Mr. Bromley.
That’s all I have. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Committee, we’re on 7-17, Public Works and Services, activity summary, asset management, operations expenditure summary, $92.341 million. Mr. Yakeleya.
There’s a question I want to ask the Minister in regard to the small communities and the Public Works garage and maintenance of those buildings. Has the department been in discussion with the other departments or corporations that work in our small communities to combine a one-stop shop? It seems that would make sense in the smaller communities than have three different garages. If we just had one building, Housing, Public Works and community municipality workers can work together. It would save costs, and save energy and fuel. It just makes sense to have them under one roof in the smaller communities. I know the community of Deline has been pushing this concept. Is Public Works in discussion right now or are there plans to be coming forward to have this type of discussion? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, we’d be interested in having those discussions and see what opportunities exist between our departments, Housing Corp and other organizations, where appropriate. We’d be interested in having those conversations.
Thank you. I look forward to being in contact with the people in Deline because they’ll be happy to hear what the Minister has said. I will relay the message to them. Of course, I will ask the Minister’s guidance as to how we kick off this type of discussion. I know Deline has been quite anxious to begin this discussion and look at this concept. Where do we begin? Where should we begin? Letter writing? Phone calls? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. It would probably be a great idea to have the community get in touch with Public Works and Services directly. I would say, remember that we do have a capital planning process and all projects would have to go through that process, but it doesn’t hurt to start having some of those discussions now for planning purposes in the future. I would encourage the Member to have his communities get in touch with us, where appropriate, and we’d be happy to have that dialogue.
I will be talking to Deline shortly and let them know. Thank you, Minister, for some guidance as to how we start out this discussion recognizing there is a capital infrastructure planning process. We need to look at other issues so at least we can start the discussions. So I’ll leave it at that.
The Minister is also responsible for granular material planning, and certainly our small communities look at that issue to help with the granular material for housing or any type of other buildings that are going up in the community. Is this the Minister I should be talking to about gravel, and sand and material for the communities, or is that Transportation? Who do you talk to? Thank you.
Thank you. This is an interdepartmental responsibility; Public Works and Services, Transportation, MACA and communities also have an opportunity to work together to coordinate their gravel needs. We would be identifying our gravel needs for buildings and infrastructure that we are responsible for. DOT would do the same and those change from year to year depending on the needs of communities, DOT, Public Works and Services. We have worked together with communities and we have worked together with other departments to coordinate the delivery of granular supply where required. So it’s a cooperation, it’s a team effort.
Okay, that’s great. My next question is on the safe drinking water initiative. Some communities have some questions on their source of water. Has the department been, in the past, willing to support communities who want to look at other sources of water initiatives? I’m talking about Fort Good Hope where there is an issue on their water source, and that Fort Good Hope wants to look at other alternative water intakes to calm the concerns of the people in that community. They are looking at another source, but that costs quite a bit to get that going. So is there support within the department to help the community look at safe drinking water initiatives?
Thank you. Just going back to the previous question, just for the record, Public Works and Services actually chairs that interdepartmental committee with respect to granular supply, but it is absolutely a partnership.
With respect to the Fort Good Hope water supply, I’ve had the opportunity to travel into Fort Good Hope with the Member and meet with the leadership there, and that was certainly a question that was brought up. I believe that work is being done on that with the community on behalf of MACA and, as with anybody in the Northwest Territories, we’re absolutely happy and willing to give technical advice and some best practices that we’ve experienced over the years.
You’ll probably need to confirm this with the Department of MACA, but I believe the Fort Good Hope work is going to be… The plant is scheduled to go into the community by winter road this year. So I assume that means some of the work is going to occur in the summertime. So I believe it’s happening now.
Thank you. My final question to the Minister. The Minister of MACA, myself, along with the leadership of Colville Lake have met recently and the issue was their newly installed water treatment plant. There have been problems with the installation and the piping had broken. We had a good meeting, it’s just that when we have companies coming into our small communities, there’s no type of guarantees. We try to say that this is the problem now, we have broken pipes that we can’t use the water treatment facility. It actually fills up, and some other issues there.
So I guess my question is twofold. One is how are we keeping track of people or companies putting in these facilities in our small northern communities? The issue we had with the Minister of MACA is that the companies did not take the advice of the traditional knowledge of the people saying that this is not the place to, however, because of the engineering degrees or whatever professions they study under said no, we know what we’re doing, it invalidated the traditional knowledge of the people in that area.
It’s no blame here. Just we need to know that if the government is going to work on the Traditional Knowledge Policy and it goes throughout the government, we need to know that contractors and …(inaudible)…that this is a policy that we like to follow and have some discussions with the people in that area. They may be right but they may be wrong and that’s something that we need to honour. As I said, we had a good discussion with the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs.
My second question was: What type of work do we do to allow outside contractors to spend some quality time with the people in that area to say this is what we’re going to do when we come in the following months to put up a water treatment plant, sewer plant, whatever, under the auspices of Public Works and Services. I do want to say that I appreciate the Minister coming into the Sahtu region. It was a good visit. He did good up there. Those are my questions.
With respect to the Colville water plant, I understand that MACA is fully engaged on that file and is working with the community. I don’t really have too much to add on that, but I hear the Member’s point about community knowledge when we’re involved in any sort of infrastructure support.
Going back to the water, we are obviously providing technical support to MACA and the community as they work forward. I hear the Member’s comments about getting knowledge from the community and I think we try to do that. Maybe we need to continue to get a little bit more information there. We do have Public Works and Services staff in many of the communities. I know we have somebody in Colville Lake that’s doing some work there and we’re always open to hearing from them and the community. We hear the Member.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Mr. Yakeleya, your time is up. Moving on with questions I have Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. A quick question on contract services. I see it’s up about 30 percent this year. Am I right in thinking that might be related to building demolitions or is there any explanation that the Minister can provide for that leap in contract service expenditures?
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As indicated in my opening comments, we are taking over health leases in the Northwest Territories. It’s a significant amount of lease space and responsibility.
So that’s where this would appear. I appreciate that. What proportion of this would that constitute?
I’ll go to the deputy minister as he’s got the information right in front of him.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Mr. Guy.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Minister is correct. There are really two things in there that were mentioned in the opening remarks to have accounted for that increase in contract services. One is the one-time funding for the demolition of Sir Alexander Mackenzie School. The second is the transfer of responsibility of the leases. Without getting into too much detail to provide what the budget for the demolition is, because we prefer not to disclose that, I would say, roughly, it’s 50/50 split, so to speak.
Thank you, Mr. Guy. Page 7-17, Public Works and Services, activity summary, asset management, operations expenditure summary, $92.341 million. Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Under asset management we have done some consolidating on the payment of the energy bills in coordination, and at one time the philosophy used to be that departments should be farmed out and be responsible for their own things like, for example, their power bill or their fuel bill and they best would know how to manage these things and coordinate these things. Since the last couple of years, Public Works and Services has taken this back. I’m curious as to how the monitoring and management of this program now has been working out. Has there been cost savings? Better organization? Better payment on time? More efficiencies? What works well and what could work better?
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We’ve talked previously already about some of the things that we do under here that we can do as a central point as opposed to being done by the departments to give a complete sense of utilization within the Government of the Northwest Territories. Things like the energy consumption analysis and benchmarking, detailed energy audits, inspections of electrical and mechanical systems that are under our responsibility. I think we have been able to get a better sense of our usage of energy and I think we’ve had an opportunity, through things like CARF, to address some of our challenges out there to help us reduce and control costs. There are some specifics I’d like to go to the deputy for.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Mr. Guy.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Going on the response the Minister has made, now that we have responsibility for the utility bills it has been put in the budgets of the maintenance departments and maintenance staff that provide the maintenance on the buildings. They are monitoring the bills as they come in. They are operating the buildings. They can see where they have irregularities in the billing. If the bill goes up for one month for no specific reason, they can go and check the operation of the building. There’s a feedback mechanism built in now through our tracking system and through the payment system where we have much better access to information on how the building is performing. The energy bill is a good indicator, as we know, through our benchmarking of how well the building is performing. It’s not just the construction of the building that contributes the energy savings but it’s also how you maintain and operate the building. If the building controls aren’t working properly or if there’s a damper that’s not closing when it should or an occupancy sensor that’s not working, it can have a significant spike in the bills. Now that we’ve consolidated that, we do have the ability to monitor and we do monitor it. We do call in technical staff to look at specific issues with buildings when it’s raised by the maintenance staff.
Thank you, Mr. Guy. Mr. Hawkins.
Who is responsible for these specific bills on these energy costs? Which departmental budget do they come from that cover the actual payments?
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It’s in the budget of Public Works and Services.
Is there a chargeback in any way to the individual departments?
No, we manage and operate the buildings and cover the costs.
So if consumption increases then process therefore would increase. I haven’t seen any energy bills get cheaper to use. Who is responsible for any spike in usage? I guess it’s around stewardship. If Public Works and Services has become the department that picks up the bills but say Education runs all their buildings lights on, whatever, it seems like the responsibility is out of touch with those who, they’re not connecting. How do you manage that problem?
