Mr. Chair, again, we will get that number for the Member on what the initial budget was. I carry over almost $3.4 million.
Getting back to the Detah access road, we had an opportunity to meet with the Yellowknives Dene and the Akaitcho leadership just last week. One of the issues we talked about was the Detah access road and the importance to get that project complete. I gave the chiefs the assurance that we are going to continue to work to try to get some additional capital dollars from the federal government. When we do, certainly the completion of the work on the Detah access road will be a high priority for us. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Mr. Bromley.
I appreciate that information on the ongoing interest of the Minister there. I guess it doesn’t address my point, though, that when we know we are going to lapse from these large adjacent back projects, significant dollars that would be huge to the Detah road project, that we identify those early on and enable that Detah road project to go forward until the bountiful federal government comes forward with additional money. This really is the GNWT’s responsibility. Thank you.
Mr. Chair, the fact remains that the work needs to get done on the Ingraham Trail. There are many areas of that roadway that require work. Just recently I was out at, for example, the Cassidy Point access road. There is going to be some work that is required there to get that access road up to grade. There are other areas of that Ingraham Trail Highway No. 4 that require our attention from a safety standpoint. The money will go there. We will find additional funding as we move forward for the Detah access road, but as it stands, the money is earmarked for reconstruction work on the Ingraham Trail. We will address the issue with the Detah road as soon as we possibly can, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Chair, I guess I will stop hammering on that point that I don’t think the Minister answered it yet. I don’t have a problem with this money being redirected as indicated here, but I am saying as a principle when we know there will be dollars left over, why not direct them to where they can be spent. It would not set this work back. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. We will take that as a final comment. Moving on on this page here, I have Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to ask the Minister in regard to the carry-overs and the incompletion of some of the bridges in the Sahtu. I want to ask the Minister whether there were sticker points that didn’t allow the department to say completion of this bridge or this bridge or this portion of the winter road. I’m speaking about some of the bridges, some pieces of road realignment that possibly we are looking forward to. What were some of those sticker points? Was it due to unforeseen circumstances or is it due to staff being overworked or are organizations not also being in line with plans? Why such huge carry-overs in the Sahtu when the activity of oil and gas is wrapping up?
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. For that answer we’re going to go to the Minister of Transportation, Minister Ramsay.
Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman. As the Member described, there is a variety of reasons why that would happen. There were some issues with the work at Bob’s Creek and Strawberry. We continue to work with Pehdzeh Ki Contractors on completing that work and there was a lot of activity, as the Member knows, in the Sahtu. Last winter there was a lot of competition for equipment and workers, and I think that led to some of the work being pushed back or delayed and would result in some of the numbers that we see here in terms of carry-overs.
I guess the positive side to this is there is a lot of work happening. There’s some capital dollars that will still need to be spent in the central Mackenzie Valley and we look forward to getting the work complete. Our primary objective is to complete the work. Thank you.
The Minister is correct; the positive side is that we’re racking up the infrastructure to support the thousands of truckloads that the oil companies bring into the economy of the Northwest Territories, specifically into the NWT into the Sahtu. So I want to ask the Minister about the carry-overs. Does the Minister have a suitable, qualified personnel to say yes, because this is happening we’ll have someone saying you need to get this contract in place, we need to look at this, we need to look at if there’s applications for permits or water licences, we need to do this and put some emphasis into that, otherwise we’re going to have carry-overs?
The Minister is right. The oil companies are also and we’re also, in the Sahtu, looking to provide services for the oil companies and heavy equipment. Sometimes we can’t wait for the department to say, well, here’s a contract and you’ll bid on it or whatever. The oil companies need you right now at double the price they pay the GNWT. So do you want a nice steak sandwich or do you want pizza? You know, what are you going to go for?
So I want to ask the Minister what to do in the Sahtu in regard to the completion of these projects and not have the carry-over.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister Miltenberger.
As a matter of business and practice as a government, we review our processes and we have to be accountable for carry-overs and we do that. We can look at the things we control. I understand in the circumstance and in the project the Member is talking about there was also issues with the contractor that caused delays and slowed things down. So those types of things have to be managed.
Often we don’t control the outcome or how it may end up being finalized. Our job is to make sure the project gets done. In this case it contributed to the delay and I think resulted in some of the carry-over. This coming year steps will be taken to put all that money to good and effective use.
I welcome the assurance by the Minister of Finance, and certainly we have to work with the Minister of the Department of Transportation and I know that he’s pretty excited about seeing what’s happening in the Sahtu. We certainly want to support not only industry but support the communities along the Mackenzie Valley winter road. So I look forward to what the Minister, through this type of infrastructure or discussion, would say that the Sahtu will one day have a Department of Transportation office in the Sahtu where they can make some decisions in regard to this type of work. We’ve been too long having decisions made outside the region and that is not cool. It’s not good and times need to be changed. It’s just like the evolution to devolution of the transportation needs to happen in the Sahtu also with this department. I support devolution in that area.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. I’ll take that last bit as a comment. Committee, we’re on page 13, highways, not previously authorized, $42.258 million. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Page 14, marine, not previously authorized, $656,000. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Road licensing and safety, not previously authorized, $201,000. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Total department, Transportation, not previously authorized, $48.183 million. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you. Moving on to page 15, Industry, Tourism and Investment, tourism and parks, not previously authorized, $711,000. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Economic diversification, not previously authorized. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a couple of comments here. I understand that this money is for, I believe there’s office space that has been secured, but it’s for developing the office space. But this is for moving, transferring the Business Incentive Policy monitoring office from Yellowknife to Hay River and the motivation, according to our information, is a decentralization effort. But I’d just like to point out some of the fallacies here of the plan that this government is pursuing right now.
If you look at, in fact, the number of jobs per capita, Hay River, or the South Slave, has the highest proportion of government jobs per capita. I’m all for decentralization, but I believe it needs to be done in a smart and aware way within the context of what people are facing in communities. By contrast, I think it has something like 13 percent of government jobs, Yellowknife about 12 percent, and then we have regions like the Tlicho, which is down about 7 percent. Relative to their population, they are very low.
I think we need to be a lot smarter about how we do these things so that we achieve the things that we claim to be wanting here with this.
The other aspect to consider is, my understanding is that none of the staff are transferring. I stand to be corrected there, but I note in our briefing that we’re looking for staff here. Maybe I’ll just ask, is that the case and when are we expecting to fill these positions? I’m not sure this falls exactly under this infrastructure, Mr. Chair. I’ll let you or the Minister decide, but I think when we make these sorts of decisions and have these infrastructure costs associated with them, we need to put it all within the context of the big picture. I’ll throw that out there and see what people want to do in terms of response as we discuss this particular item.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. For that we’ll go to the ITI Minister, Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank the Member for bringing the issue up. It was part of the government’s decision to look at decentralizing some positions. In this case, ITI had the Business Incentive Policy shop. It included four positions. We are currently out to competition for the manager’s position. The Member is correct; we didn’t have any of the four people that were in those… Actually, there are three out of the four positions that were staffed at the time and they decided to not relocate. We have moved the office there and our intention is to staff the office in Hay River. This is just part of the cost of us doing that. I would suspect, as we move forward and there are other positions decentralized, that we will have to look at incurring further cost to locate offices outside of Yellowknife. Thank you.
Thanks to the Minister for that response. That was pretty clear. I don’t really disagree with what he said there as long as we are doing decentralization intelligently. Decentralizing when there is already an overabundance relative to the rest of the territory of government workers is a strange process to achieve decentralization to me.
The other aspect is we want to know what the full costs are. Will the Minister commit to telling us how long these positions remain empty and this service is not provided and report to us regularly on that? I guess I would ask that the Premier do that, as well, as we go through decentralization so we are aware of full costs as we do this.
At some point I think decisions will have to be made. I would love to see decentralization done successfully. I think it is a real opportunity that we need to pursue, but again, it needs to be done with all our eyes open to achieve our goals. Thank you.
Mr. Chair, I didn’t want the Member to get the impression that the services were going unrendered. They are being delivered to the public, to the business community. That is being done from the staff here at ITI in Yellowknife until a manager is hired for the Hay River office and that our staff are hired for the Hay River office, but I will make a commitment to keep Members apprised of those positions.
As I mentioned, I fully intend to staff all four positions in Hay River and continue to move that effort forward, but we are servicing the public’s needs through a manager here at ITI.
As Members know, there is very seldom a week goes by where there’s not a question about the Business Incentive Policy, so we have had some activity there. We have handled that activity. We will continue to do so until we have that staff fully functional in Hay River.
I do take the Member’s point that we need to, when we do look at moving positions, that we have what the full cost of doing that is and we are able to secure office space and get an idea on what the costs are going to be associated with moving those positions. Thank you.
Mr. Chair, thanks for the Minister’s commitment. I guess there is an obvious concern if four PYs are being done by equal and other jobs. Obviously, they are not able to do their jobs, unless they are super people or unless we have a lot less work for them than what we are paying them for. Obviously, I don’t think we can count on that as something to give us assurance that the public is being well served. I know the Minister is aware that I appreciate that he is focusing people to be kept trying to do what they can to make sure the services are rendered until we are fully staffed up again, but there are obvious costs there. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. I will interpret that as a final comment. Moving on for questions on this page I have Mrs. Groenewegen.
I know I’ve had questions on this page or questions about Mr. Bromley’s comments, but I couldn’t help but hear him say that he is taking a ratio of government workers per population for the South Slave region which, in case he doesn’t know, Fort Smith region is not Hay River. That includes Fort Smith which, for all intents and purposes, is pretty much a government town compared to Hay River. It is a sad day that, after how many years of begging for a few decentralized positions out of Yellowknife, any Yellowknife MLA could not sit here and be very happy about some positions going out of here. If Yellowknife doesn’t think that they have a disproportionate amount of everything that this government spends money on, employs people in, then let’s have that debate in this House.
Thank you to this government that there are a few positions coming to a community like Hay River, Fort Smith and a few of the regional centres outside of Yellowknife. Good on this government. Like I said, it has been years of begging and cajoling. We finally have a government that is prepared to put their actions where they say their commitment is and we see this. It’s not large-scale, it’s small-scale, but at least it’s something and we’re happy about that. So I thank the government for that. But my goodness, to hear Mr. Bromley talk about the Fort Smith region as if it’s Hay River because we’re getting Business Incentive Policy jobs in Hay River, it’s sad.
Anyway, that’s all I have to say. Thank you.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. We’ll take that as a comment. I didn’t hear a question there. Thank you very much. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you. I feel like I’m at the witness table here, Mr. Chair.
---Laughter
But since the comment was directed at me, I appreciate hearing from the Member for Hay River where these jobs are being moved to. I’m sure it was an unbiased comment. I would ask the Member to check out the Hansard for today and see if I had any complaint whatsoever about the jobs leaving Yellowknife. I think I stated fairly clearly, perhaps abundantly clearly, that I support decentralization, done in an intelligent manner. But I still do appreciate my colleague’s comments, all of them. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Again, I treat that as a comment. Next on my list I have Mr. Bouchard.
I guess I needed to pipe in there a little bit about the comments on the Business Incentive Policy office in Hay River. We’re talking about four positions and Mr. Bromley is using statistics that have to do with the South Slave area where we’re looking at 300-and-some jobs versus 2,600. I mean, you can use a percentage if you want, but we’re talking about 300-and-some jobs compared to 2,600 in the Yellowknife area. So, I mean, it’s comparing apples to oranges, and I know this has nothing to do with the debate, but if we’re going to start debating this from the House and this is the first four positions we’ve decentralized, we’re going to have a lot of arguments here and it’s going to divide us a lot.
I understand my colleague’s concerns in the other areas and I’m supportive of decentralizing throughout the territory.
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. Again, I’ll treat that as a comment. Colleagues, if it’s okay, committee, I’d like to redirect committee back to Appropriation Supplementation 2013-14. We are on page 15. We last left off on economic diversification, not previously authorized, $158,000. Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Well, I won’t be defending Bob. Bromley that is, and for the record, I don’t care how he feels, either. So the Premier doesn’t have to think he’s alone in that category.
But, Mr. Chairman, it should not go without saying, first I will make it clear I’ve gone on the record many occasions in support of decentralization of positions, but any type of position like this – and I’ve asked this in the past – I’d like to hear how we put it in the record of this office was evaluated and what type of outreach was extended to the employees. I’ve always spoken to an employee perspective of when we uproot…
Mr. Chairman, I can’t hear myself over Mrs. Groenewegen talking. Could you assist in chairing?
Oh!
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’m coming at the perspective from the human angle and I’ve often said that any time we look at something we should always look to the communities first to see where we can bolster two or three. Ten or 20 new jobs in Yellowknife has not quite the same effect as it would in a regional community that needs those employment numbers, needs those investment dollars and needs that type of activity.
But what my question is really narrowed down to is what type of evaluation and incentives were offered to these employees to look at this transfer? I know this will be impacting four families and I’m very curious. As well, on the same token, were they offered packages, priority hiring status, et cetera, if they didn’t want to take those positions? I assume they were given first right of refusal to consider to move to the great state of Hay River. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. For that we’ll go to Minister Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In regard to what happens with affected employees in this case, and as a matter of course I’d ask the Minister of HR to just touch on some of the considerations that are given and efforts that are made to accommodate the affected employees in any particular circumstance, in this case the BIP.
Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Minister Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. We have policies and procedures to support individuals who are affected in this capacity. They are put on a priority list and things like that. I can’t say specifically what happened to these individuals because I’m not 100 percent familiar. But what I can do is commit to get for committee the details on what was done for these individuals and I will make sure Member Hawkins gets that detail as well.
Thank you, Minister Abernethy. Committee, I just want to remind Members here, we are dealing with infrastructure, we are dealing with the relocation of the office. Questions here today should be operational in need. Mr. Hawkins.
No thanks, Mr. Chairman. I was more curious as to the human impact of this particular one. Minister Abernethy is more than happy to provide me with that type of response. That’s all. Thanks.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Economic diversification, not previously authorized, $158,000. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Total department, not previously authorized, $869,000.
Agreed.
