Bill 12 has had second reading and is referred to a standing committee.
---Carried
Item 20, consideration in Committee of the Whole of bills and other matters: Tabled Document 4-16(5), Executive Summary of the Report of the Joint Review Panel for the Mackenzie Gas Project; Tabled Document 30-16(5), 2010 Review of Members’ Compensation and Benefits; Tabled Document 38-16(5), Supplementary Health Benefits – What We Heard; Tabled Document 62-16(5), Northwest Territories Water Stewardship Strategy; Tabled Document 66-16(5), NWT Capital Estimates 2011-2012; Bill 4, An Act to Amend the Social Assistance Act; Bill 8, Social Work Profession Act; and Bill 9, An Act to Amend the Tourism Act, with Mr. Bromley in the chair.
I’d like to call Committee of the Whole to order. We have before us for consideration: Tabled Document 4-16(5), Tabled Document 30-16(5), Tabled Document 38-16(5), Tabled Document 62-16(5), Tabled Document 66-16(5), Bill 4, Bill 8, and Bill 9. What is the wish of committee? Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The committee would like to continue with the consideration of the capital estimates and today we would like to proceed with Public Works and Services and, time permitting, we want to move on to Education, Culture and Employment.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. On that note, we’ll take a short break.
---SHORT RECESS
Thank you. I would like to call Committee of the Whole to order. We have before us today Tabled Document 66-16(5), NWT Capital Estimates 2011-2012. We are starting together with the Department of Public Works and Services. Is committee agreed?
Agreed.
I’d like to ask the Minister if he would like to bring in witnesses. Mr. McLeod
Yes, Mr. Chairman, I’d like to bring in witnesses.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. I’d like to ask the Sergeant-at-Arms to escort the witnesses into the House.
If I could call on the Minister to introduce his witnesses.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With me to my right is Mr. Paul Guy, the deputy minister of Public Works and Services; and I also have on my left Laurie Gault, director of Technology Service Centre.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Welcome, Mr. Guy, Ms. Gault. Committee, we have before us Public Works and Services, which starts on page 5-4 with asset management. Sorry, it starts with the summary on page 5-2, but we’re going to defer that until we’re completed the detail and start with asset management, which goes from page 5-3 through page 5-5. Financial summary, Public Works and Services, activity summary, asset management, infrastructure investment summary, total infrastructure investment summary, $12.527 million. Committee, on page 5-4, questions? Page 5-4, committee agree?
Agreed.
Next we have Technology Service Centre, which is from page 5-6 through page 5-8. Public Works and Services, activity summary, Technology Service Centre, infrastructure investment summary, total infrastructure investment summary, $1.3 million. Questions, committee? Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to ask the Minister about support for our agencies in the department within the government. In terms of electronic support and infrastructure, I know that there is some interest in electronic infrastructure for our health care operations in our small communities and with the whole accessing more infrastructure for our health centres. I’m not too sure if this is the place where I can ask about this in this department, if this department is heading up looking at putting in stronger infrastructure into our communities that require them, especially for our health centres and education in the schools, also.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Ms. Gault.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We currently have several projects underway that we are looking to address both the Internet needs as well as the wide area network needs of particularly health and education. We have several pilot projects. One is the Internet Redirect, whereby we’ll be looking at alternate facilities to provide more bandwidth to our schools, and the other is to improve transmission to the satellite communities for TeleSpeech initiatives.
The specific phrase on bandwidth support, I’m looking more in the future of increasing that to our health centres in the small communities where they are now starting to have more technology that would have electronic medical records and being more transparent in the health centres to the larger centres where these records are available. Right now I know we still operate with the paper system and I think if there’s some indication from this department on areas they’re going to look at in the health centre on the specific issue of supporting our communities with implementing a health records system and the bandwidth that would support it. I know we’re also in competition with the schools. How do we start ensuring that our small community health centres will also receive some support in terms of medical records being instantly produced in the health centres so we can get greater access to health care to our people?
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Mr. McLeod.
Mr. Chairman, the question is not in relationship to the capital and it’s not reflected in this plan. However, we are looking at going out for a new DCN contract very shortly and we’re also looking at ways to increase our bandwidth. That, of course, will allow for more medical traffic in records. We are investing in this budget in server hardware and looking at network infrastructure and data storage infrastructure, and that will help to integrate some of the systems. There’s a budget of $1.2 million to deal with those changes, those improvements.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Good observation. I’ll ask the Members to try and remember to keep our questions to capital items and save programming questions for later. Moving on, we have Mr. Beaulieu next. Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With committee’s indulgence, I’d like to ask questions on page 5-4 and 5-7. I didn’t have an opportunity to. I can proceed with that. I just wanted to ask the Minister a question relating to asset management on the deferred maintenance. I was wondering if the department is able to maintain their budget that will allow them to catch up with serious deferred maintenance items that are apparent in government buildings across the Territories. First question.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. I gather that we have gone back to page 5-4. Let me just seek committee approval to return to page 5-4. Is committee agreed?
Agreed.
Thank you. The question stands. Mr. McLeod.
Mr. Chairman, the issue of infrastructure deficit and deferred maintenance is of concern right across Canada. We’ve worked with a number of jurisdictions to try to bring that to the attention of the federal government. Within our own budgets and our own initiatives, we’ve targeted deferred maintenance as a priority. Over the last few years we’ve managed to bring that number down by $145 million from a huge challenge with the infrastructure deficit. We’ll continue to do so over the next while. We have targeted some dollars for this coming year and we would expect the next governments to do the same as we work towards eliminating that infrastructure deficit or the deferred maintenance. However, it’s going to be long term. What is the number now? The number will be reduced down to $325 million by the end of this coming fiscal year.
Thank you. Just one more question on that. Does the Minister anticipate that the government or departments will ever be able to catch up with deferred maintenance items?
That is our goal, as a government, to reduce the deficit on deferred maintenance. We have done quite well over the last few years and this is as a result of having a very good capital budget across the departments and replacing a lot of the infrastructure that was very old and could not be upgraded. We’ve also done a lot of upgrades to buildings that needed it and we were able to address it. But there is still a fairly large deficit budget in the area of deferred maintenance, and I think that every government that comes on stream is going to have to tackle this issue and it will be around for some time. But the goal is to reduce it down to zero. I’m not sure how long that’s going to take, but it’s going to require continued investment over many years.
Is the Minister able to tell me if there is capital carry-overs in the deferred maintenance area, previous years or either just the last year, and if there’s any anticipation due to the majority of the construction season ending for this fiscal year, if there are carry-overs in this area, deferred maintenance? Thank you.
As the Member is aware, in the area of deferred maintenance we are certainly playing catch-up. The number for deferred maintenance was quite large. We’ve managed to reduce it by $145 million and we’ll always be working towards reducing it and trying to eliminate it. That might be difficult, of course.
Mr. Chairman, we’ve also managed to reduce our carry-overs from an historic amount of an average of about 35 percent down to 20 percent and some of those would have been in the area of deferred maintenance. I don’t know if we have that actual number at this point. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, I’m finished questions on page 5-4. I’d like to ask questions on page 5-7, if that’s okay with committee.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. What we’ll do is we’ll conclude page 5-4. Public Works and Services, activity summary, asset management, infrastructure investment summary, total infrastructure investment summary, $12.527 million.
Agreed.
Page 5-7. Mr. Beaulieu, go ahead.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’m wondering if the department has looked at alternatives to adding time on to the evergreening of the technology for the purposes of saving capital dollars. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Ms. Gault.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Our studies that we continue to look at every year at our equipment lifecycle still support a four to five evergreening cycle. This is something we will continue to look at even more closely with our data centre. We may have to extend some of the older equipment a bit longer than currently, in order to stay within a reasonable budget, but currently the studies indicate four to five years is still that average lifecycle. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, with the amount of electronic waste that’s being produced in the world, I was wondering if there has been smaller components technology that can be added to the current stuff which is, in essence, evergreening the other computers and so on without actually changing the entire component. Thank you.
One of the areas we’ve moved to in recent years is increasing the use of what we call a virtual environment. Not only can we reuse existing services, which helps our departments and doesn’t incur additional investment, but also we get a lot more functionality out of those, extend the life. We also are looking at hardware reuse. We have smaller footprint. We also have cases where we actually have the fans will automatically turn on and off to make better use of the power in the data centre. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Gault. Committee, we are on page 5-7. Public Works and Services, activity summary, Technology Service Centre, infrastructure investment summary, total infrastructure investment summary, $1.300 million.
Agreed.
Next, we have petroleum products division, which ranges from 5-9 through pages 5-11. We’re on page 5-10, financial summary, petroleum products division, Public Works and Services, activity summary, petroleum products division, infrastructure investment summary, total infrastructure investment summary, $475, 000.
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. This concludes the detail. We turn now to page 5-2 for the departmental summary, Public Works and Services, infrastructure investment summary, total infrastructure investment summary, $14.302 million. Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to ask the Minister in terms of the infrastructure investment, in terms of all of our infrastructure and the amount of investment that we are putting in this capital plan here, in terms of the overall infrastructure with his department. What is the percentage number in terms of our investment? Are we at 10 percent? What percentage, if you have a percentage number? Ideally, we want to invest into our infrastructure, we want to invest, say, 100 percent; however, with the competing departments and dollars for infrastructure, we can only invest 10 percent of the total of this budget here. Where are we within DPW?
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’m not sure if we are in a position today to provide an actual percentage of what we are needing in terms of our infrastructure needs. If we looked at it in terms of our five-year needs for all of the government across all of the departments, our needs would probably total up to about $2.5 billion.
Mr. Minister, I would ask if you would clarify that number for me, please.
The number that I quoted for all our needs is around $2.5 billion or more, if we started including all the different needs from all the different departments for infrastructure, and that includes the Mackenzie Valley Highway and all the other pieces of infrastructure that have been identified as part of our needs.
Was there some mention of an under a five-year plan?
