The Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment has a very good track record when it comes to working with the Territorial Farmers’ Association. We put on the NFTI, the Farm Training Institute in Hay River, last year. It was very successful. Again, we need to ensure that that relationship that we have with the Territorial Farmers’ Association continues to be nourished. We are going forward again this spring with an Agriculture Strategy for the territory. We need to ensure we have a sound policy base. We need to ensure we are including stakeholders in the development of that strategy. We are going to put our best effort into that so we can continue to see the success that we’ve had in the agricultural sector here in the Northwest Territories continue to move forward. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will be asking questions to the Minister of Public Works regarding the downtown building that’s being constructed at this time.
I guess my first question to the Public Works Minister is: What will be the full cost of this particular building? Once we hear that on the record, I’d like to know what we will be saving once we understand the investment required to build that building. I want to understand how much we will be saving, as a government, by having that building in place. Let’s start with that. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Minister of Public Works, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I do not have the cost-benefit analysis of the savings between the construction of this building and continuing to lease office space. What I do have is the initial evaluation when we were going into building this office space. We were looking at the amount of space that we are leasing versus the amount of space that we own and ensuring we have a good balance for the city of Yellowknife. Thank you.
There have been a fair amount of questions regarding the impact of this potential new building. I shouldn’t say “potential” new building; it’s coming like a freight train. Much has been discussed about the vacancy rate and the impact this will have on our city and certainly the impact on attracting more investment from companies wanting to build office space.
What type of evaluation was done on rental vacancy? How does the Northwest Territories, particularly Yellowknife, compare to that study on vacancy rates and how does it compare to across Canada? What is considered a normal vacancy rate when we consider government-owned and leased buildings? I want to understand the type of vacancy vacuum we’ve created and the impact it will have on our local market to attract new investment in Yellowknife. Thank you.
My understanding is we haven’t created a great amount of vacancy. In fact, we are still looking for some office space for some of the departments that are not moving out of lease space. That building will be filled by Department of Transportation and the Department of Health. The information I have here doesn’t indicate that that building is going to create any hardship at all for any of the office people that provide office space, any of the businesses that are providing office space to the GNWT. Thank you.
Some people have informed me that local market with more than a 5 percent vacancy rate can really seriously affect potential investors in a particular market area. So, in other words, once we reach greater saturation than 5 percent in the local market, investors are starting to look at this area and saying, well, why would we be there because we’re just going to build an empty building.
What type of study and balance was taken into consideration and is the Minister able to cite the actual percentage of vacancy that will be created in the local market here? Because I want to understand, and I think the public wants to understand, what potential vacancy we will have here and certainly the effects it will have on potential investors that may want to look north, but don’t see it as a profitable market and probably stay away. Thank you.
Thank you. The information I have is that the office space vacancy in the city of Yellowknife will be between 5 and 7 percent, which is considered to be a healthy vacancy. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My concern is being at least 5 percent before the building was built or is being built, but certainly let’s get to my last and fourth question, which is about the building and the impact of the cost. Now, the Minister said he didn’t actually have the cost on this building at the very start of my first question. Is the Minister in a position to talk about the costs associated with change orders? So in other words, what was the original budget of this building and what will the final number be when the final cheque is written? We need to get a sense of impact on the change orders and how they affect them and sometimes it’s received as the backdoor bidding, people bid low and then they change order the final price up. If the Minister could get that detail before the House. Thank you.
Thank you. The office space construction is not over budget. There has been no requirement for change order. The only thing that we have changed is that we have moved money from the previous year back because the office space construction was ahead of schedule. But the bottom line is that we went in with a certain budget and we’re well within that budget. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Blake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a few questions for the Minister of Housing. I’d like to ask the Minister for an update on the Joe Greenland Centre. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Blake. Minister of Municipal and Community affairs, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The contract tenders should have gone out and we anticipate some of the work being done on the foundation in late spring and construction in the summer and fall and scheduled for a spring opening of 2015. Thank you.
The Minister actually answered all three of my questions here. That’s good news.
When can the elders in the community expect to move into that building? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I’ll just work on the one question. We worked closely with the community in identifying a location for the Joe Greenland Centre and their preference was the existing location. So the demolition took place and the building is down. If all goes according to schedule, the elders should be able to move back in there in spring of 2015. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As a follow-up to my Member’s statement, I am gravely concerned that we’re not doing enough for our NGOs who provide critical services for the Northwest Territories. Further to this, our Executive website is now over a year old and provides no information for funding for the upcoming 2014-2015 fiscal year. We need a firm, renewed commitment from our government that sends a clear message to support our NGO sector. With that, I have questions today for the Premier.
Given the paired down Executive, which now has divested itself of devolution and the program review functions in the 2014-2015 Main Estimates, will the Premier commit to a renewed approach to NGO support and funding?
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. The honourable Premier, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m pleased to advise the Member that in addition to the $350,000 that he referenced, this government spends millions of dollars on third-party agencies. Not only that, through the Anti-Poverty Strategy we’re going to put another $500,000 to put towards use for our NGOs. We have so many third-party agencies that we have a Third-Party Agencies Accountability Framework and to ensure consistency of dealing financially, we’ve developed criteria for determining the level of accountability and we use that accountability to determine the level of funding. Thank you.
Thank you. It’s a given that we have many NGOs offering similar programs, sometimes overlapping mandates and duplication of synergies. What is the Premier prepared to do to assist these NGOs streamline their operation and stretch our funding dollars? Thank you.
Thank you. The Government of the Northwest Territories does not prescribe NGO mandates or activities. What we do is we assist them. So with the NGO Stabilization Fund, for example, we provide short-term support to NGOs for governance, management, organizational development and extraordinary operations so that they can continue to provide the essential services.
Thank you. Will the Premier commit to developing an NGO support office similar to what we see with the BDIC, but which helps emergent NGOs get on their feet and address my earlier questions assisting existing NGOs streamline their operations and maximize their funding? Thank you.
Thank you. Yellowknife used to have a storefront for voluntary organizations and it was not very well utilized. At the end of the day it was shut down, so we’re using other processes to assist NGOs. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Can the Premier share what the Department of Executive is doing right now, because their website is currently a little outdated, and what are they going to do to reach out and assist NGOs seeking funding for the upcoming 2014-2015 fiscal year? Thank you.
I’m not sure when the Member checked the website, but I checked it today and it looked like it was updated. But for the Member’s information, for 2013-14 there were 16 applications and 11 organizations were granted funding. For this upcoming year we have guaranteed that we will have our request for applications before the end of May and that we will have the money out before the end of July. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The Member for Hay River North, Mr. Bouchard.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Last week I had questions for the Minister of Education on junior kindergarten. I want to follow up with some questions about the funding for other programs that are going to be affected by junior kindergarten.
Has the Department of Education looked into the effects of taking four-year-olds out of the systems we have? I’ll use Hay River as an example, obviously. We have a playschool, we have Growing Together and we have a Head Start program. These are programs that are affected by that, so I’m wondering if the department has looked into the effect of the enrolment in those departments by introducing junior kindergarten.
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
The introduction of junior kindergarten this fall, the following year in Hay River is not meant to replace other high quality programming being delivered in Hay River, playschool or Head Start programming. We are providing families of the NWT with a high quality, affordable education option for four-year-olds.
The early childhood program continues to provide ongoing funding through all these licenced daycares and family day homes, as Members alluded to earlier. This also addresses where we have different pots of funding that I’ve highlighted in the House, I believe it was last week or the week before. Language Nest funding like the Small Communities Initiative, some Small Communities Initiative funding, Healthy Children Initiative funding. Part of the funding that we provide to licenced child care programming or licenced daycare programming is to offset the costs of operating, whether it be the day home or the licenced operators. We will continue to provide that funding to these establishments.
I guess the issue is if those organizations don’t have four-year-olds, are they funded per capita or per student? How will they continue to exist? Will the enrolments be so declined that they will not be able to operate? Has the department looked at that enrolment and do they fund per student?
We made some changes to our early childhood programming and then based on the student attendance and the reporting mechanism and so forth. We’re trying to make it easier for the licenced operators to function effectively and efficiently. Yes, my department, again, is working very closely with operators in the Northwest Territories, not only Hay River but other communities that have four-year-olds going into the school system, because we’re fully aware that the planned focus will be zero to three, so that’s the planned target. We’re doing what we can to subsidize them with all the program subsidizations that we currently offer.
I’ve received information from one of the organizations, the Head Start program, that basically they had been informed that they are now a zero to three not a three/four, and I guess they’re quite disturbed in the fact that they have been running this for over 20 years. They were asked to realign after the Department of Education has done that.
How can the Minister justify that we’re changing the focus to zero to three when these organizations were established to do three to four?
Early childhood consultants have been working with the operators throughout the Northwest Territories. We will continue to do so. These are just some of the areas that have been in discussion with the operators. We’re offering a free junior kindergarten to the Northwest Territories and allowing more focus on the zero to three as we move forward this fall, the following year and also the third year phased approach. The free junior kindergarten has been offered as a free basis. It has been a fee-for-service in some of the communities. This is an opportunity for those individuals, the parents, the single parents that cannot afford junior kindergarten.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bouchard.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my experience, nothing is free in this world. The point is that the funding for the junior kindergarten is going to be from within and now it’s affecting other organizations, other communities that have Head Start programs. My concern is that these Head Start programs and other organizations will fail. I’m just wondering: Has the department completely assessed this in their plan to launch junior kindergarten both in the small communities and in the larger centres?
This junior kindergarten is not new to us. We’ve been engaging the general public since the early start of the Aboriginal Student Achievement Initiative, the early childhood development, the framework itself now, engaging education renewal and innovation. There has been a lot of discussion pertaining to this, and yes, there is going to be an evaluation of what’s needed at the community with those operators, what kind of subsidies will be required, and we will continue to subsidize them. We will continue to strengthen that. We don’t want to see operators losing out. Those are just some of the discussions and our early childhood consultants are working very closely with the operators.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Mr. Nadli.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs. I think I’ve raised this matter on water treatment plants in the House on numerous occasions. A particular highlight is in Kakisa. Because they don’t have a water treatment plant, people have to schedule their lives around water delivery and perhaps it sometimes could be delivered today, and so people have to make due with perhaps a 250 gallon tank that could last until Friday. Other examples are recently ITI had invested with the community a fish plant, and it was noted that the operations would probably be contingent on a water supply.
With those in mind, what are the barriers to establishing a local water treatment plant in Kakisa? If I could pose that to the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs.
Thank you, Mr. Nadli. The Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There are no barriers to establishing a water treatment plant in Kakisa. I noticed on their five-year capital plan they have identified some funding to go towards a water treatment plant. Again, we can work with the community. I’m not sure if their capital plan has changed, but we can work with the community and see what some of their priorities are and how we can make it happen.
My question, again, is what are the obstacles of setting in place a local water treatment plant in Enterprise?
