Thank you, Minister McLeod. Committee, again, we’re on page 58 of the capital estimates. Finance and infrastructure services, information item, any questions? Seeing none, again committee, if you’d be kind enough to go back to page 57, NWT Housing Corporation. This is just an information item only, any questions?
Agreed.
Seeing none. Does committee agree we have concluded consideration of NWT Housing Corporation?
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. I’d like to thank Minister McLeod, Mr. Stewart and Mr. Anderson for joining us this evening. If I can get the Sergeant-at-Arms to please escort the witnesses out of the Chamber, thank you.
We are going to continue on with the NWT capital estimates with Municipal and Community Affairs. With that, I will turn it over to the Minister responsible. Mr. Minister, do you have any witnesses you would like to bring into the House? Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I do.
Thank you, Minister McLeod. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. Sergeant-at-Arms, if you could please escort the witnesses into the Chamber. Thank you.
For the record, Mr. McLeod, would you like to introduce your witness, please?
Mr. Chair, I have with me Mr. Tom Williams, deputy minister of Municipal and Community Affairs.
Thank you, Minister McLeod. Mr. Williams, welcome to the Chamber again. Committee has indicated we are on municipal and corporate affairs. According to our protocol, we are going to forego opening comments and be going directly into general comments. Mr. Blake.
Mr. Chair, I have a couple of questions for the Minister referring to Fort McPherson as it is under public administration now which is basically under the Minister’s department. I’d like to ask the Minister what the plans are. I know there are some issues with the arena. That is why the hours have been cut back. There is a little trouble with the foundation. Is the department looking to fix this problem in the next month or two? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Blake. Minister McLeod.
Mr. Chair, we have, I believe, an engineer going into Fort McPherson next week. We will work with the community, identify some of the issues that might be taking place with the hockey rink, not only the hockey rink but the curling rink. Once we receive that report, we will work with the community to see if there are ways that we can deal with that and if there are ways so these facilities can be kept open. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Chair, just on the same topic, I know the community, when it was under the hamlet, we were planning to start the planning process towards a new arena. What stage are we at now with those plans for a new arena? Thank you.
Mr. Chair, the planning work can still be undertaken even while they are under municipal administration. We will work with them, obviously, to make sure that they have financing or the finances to help deal with it. As far as the planning goes, that doesn’t stop because they are under municipal administration. Thank you.
Mr. Chair, I mentioned they are under the public administrator. Is the administrator starting those plans as we speak? Thank you.
Mr. Chair, not at the present time. He is spending a lot of his time dealing with the deficit and trying to find ways to alleviate some of the pressures. As things settle down a bit, then we can have a discussion with him as to getting someone in there and working with the community to start the plans for a new facility.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. General comments. Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just have one comment to make with this expenditure. It’s that this dollar amount has stayed the same for too long. I’ve mentioned this before. The needs of communities are constantly increasing. I know the needs of this government are increasing, as well, but I would urge the Minister to do what he can to get this amount for capital infrastructure in our communities increased.
We have devolved a lot of buildings to our communities through the New Deal over the years. Many of them were not new buildings; they were the older buildings. Therefore, they either need operations and maintenance upkeep or some of them will need replacing.
Expenditures increase every year. Nothing gets cheaper; it always gets more expensive. I would like to suggest that this number needs to be increased. It’s not going to happen in this budget year, but I would hope for 2016-17 that we would see an increase in the amount of capital expenditures for our communities. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister McLeod.
Mr. Chair, that is a fair comment. It is one that we have heard in our dealings with the communities. With the funding review committee that we had, that is one of the areas that they have identified. Once we have the findings of that, the final findings, we may have to consider how we go forward.
The Member is absolutely correct; I think it has been $28.002 million for the last four or five years. On top of that, we still try and access any federal funding we can that we can pass on to the communities to help with that. It is something that is on our radar. We will have to see where it goes once we get the final funding. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. General comments. Since I don’t see any more general comments, does committee agree to proceed in detail?
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. Again, page 53 in your capital estimates. We will be deferring page 53 until consideration of activity detail is complete. With that, I will ask you to turn to page 55. Municipal and Community Affairs, regional operations, infrastructure investments, $28.002 million. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. Again, if you can return back to page 53 for total infrastructure. Municipal and Community Affairs, total infrastructure investments, $28.002 million. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. Does committee agree that we have concluded consideration of the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs?
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. I would like to thank the Minister and Mr. Williams for joining us this evening. Can I get the Sergeant-at-Arms to please escort the witness out? Thank you.
Committee, keeping on with the capital estimates, I will ask committee to turn to the Public Works and Services section. With that, we will turn it over to the Minister responsible to see if he has any witnesses he would like to bring into the Chamber. Minister Beaulieu.
Mr. Chair, I do.
Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. Sergeant-at-Arms, if you could please escort the witnesses into the Chamber. Thank you.
Mr. Beaulieu, if you would be kind enough to introduce your witnesses to the Chamber, please. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To my left is the deputy minister of Public Works and Services, Paul Guy; and to my right, director of TSC, Laurie Gault.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. Mr. Guy, Ms. Gault, thank you for joining us this evening. Committee, as agreed upon earlier, there will be no opening comments. We will go directly into general comments. General comments, Public Works and Services. Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. My comments will focus on the deferred maintenance. As the Minister of Finance indicated to us earlier through his presentation to the Members, we have a huge deficit with the infrastructure in the Northwest Territories in the billions of dollars. We are doing our best to maintain that percentage of power, we are increasing to lower our deficit and it is the aging of our infrastructure.
Has the Minister, along with his colleagues, looked at the other options to look at reducing the amount of deficit we have? I think we are in the billions of dollars. This government here is strapped, cash tight with the amount of money that we received through the Territorial Funding Formula with the Government of the Northwest Territories, and we’re doing the best we can. I know there are also other options to look at how do we maintain our assets through a P3 concept. The shortage of cash that we have, are there other avenues of building, design build kind of a concept that we don’t put up our cash upfront so that we can build buildings and we can turn around and lease them back from the companies through not having to have all this cash upfront to start construction in our small communities?
I talk about one of the old buildings in Tulita, the DPW garage. It has been there since the ‘60s. It is actually a federal government asset and it is sitting there. It’s no different than the garage that we have at the Yellowknife Airport. Now they have a new building and garage there. Has that building at the Yellowknife Airport been deemed unfit or overcrowded and for all the reasons we should get a new airport garage in Yellowknife here? We have those types of situations in our communities. I’m just asking again for the one in Tulita.
I guessed the deferred maintenance, we are doing the best that we can and working on how we reduce, I guess, through a list of priorities and what can be done to look at the one in Tulita as a priority. I haven’t yet seen anything done in the last three years.
The other one I want to talk about is the Public Works shop replacement, and I’m very happy to see this within the capital for 2015-16 in Norman Wells. I know that there is some high interest from some of the members in my region, especially in Norman Wells, as to this shop here. Look at some of the concepts of this whole infrastructure. Should this be a successful project starting on time, within budget and completing on time, we want to look at this concept, because I remember Mr. Danny Gaudet along with other members from Deline talking to Mr. Miltenberger and some other Members and maybe even yourself, Mr. Minister, that we can look at this concept in Deline. This was talked about four or five years ago. Putting a one-stop shop facility in our small communities where everybody could take advantage, even help the education with having a trade centre there, so that high school students could go there and learn a specific trade and earn credits using the concept of pooling our resources together in a small community. That is what Deline has been asking for the last eight or so years. Let’s look at this. I know this is one aspect of how do we save money and prove our efficiencies of our expenditures when you are looking at these types of designs across the Northwest Territories. I’m happy that the one is being looked at in Norman Wells. Those are my comments on this issue.
Mr. Chair, the Minister is looking at these types of shop replacements, and if it is possible, we would like to learn from that and use that in other communities such as Deline and probably other communities in the Northwest Territories. I think that is a good possibility in helping each department out.
I will leave you with that as my comments and look forward to working with the Minister through his budget here.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The deferred maintenance budget of $5 million is in the capital and we also have $3 million in O and M in deferred maintenance, as the Members are aware. The infrastructure deficit is impacted a bit by deferred maintenance. Deferred maintenance essentially is on infrastructure that is already in place; however, it prevents that from becoming infrastructure deficit by us doing midlife work. Also, when there is time for items that have been deferred, that is the program for deferred, then we then do the work on the building. So we have been able to reduce our deferred maintenance from $470 million in 2007-08 to $290 million currently. So we have worked towards, I guess in a sense we are reducing the infrastructure deficit.
The shop in Norman Wells, for us, is something positive. We are working with the Department of Lands to build a shop that we are both going to use. We both gain from working together. We are using a piece of land that was transferred, actually an asset that was transferred over by the federal government that was beyond the use, it was not a safe building to use. The federal government is going to demolish the building and remediate the site and it will be then transferred to Lands. So that land will become available, essentially leaving the Lands without a shop in Norman Wells. We have been talking to that department and there will be a joint shop built there, so that’s something that we’ll benefit from. Lands will not use their building all the time. It’s going to be to store some equipment for parts of the year.
In Deline that concept has been presented to us by the community governments. Their wish is that ourselves work with the local hamlet, the local housing authority and also Environment and Natural Resources to build a joint multi-use facility, multi-use warehouse, shop, so that is something that we are continuing to discuss. Our plan for Deline, I believe, is quite a ways out. We are looking at the scheduling of all our warehouses that need to be replaced, and that comes in down the road at 2021-22. This is something that we need to discuss with the other departments that may have an earlier need, and if we can have economies of scale and it will allow us to move that number closer to now, we may be able to do that.
I like the idea that shops such as these could be used in schools where they don’t have the technical program in the schools and so on. Again, that’s something that I would be prepared to have discussions with the Minister of Education that could eventually lead to discussions between ourselves and the various education authorities.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Continuing on with general comments, I have Mr. Bouchard.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. My comments for this department, I guess if I can get a little more detail on the deferred maintenance. I know it’s been going down annually, what those numbers are, and do we have any kind of projections on where that’s going? Are we seeing some of those numbers going to be increasing over the next few years, or are we getting rid of some of those assets that actually are probably… I’m thinking we’ve got some older buildings that, actually, if we get rid of some of those older buildings it will drop dramatically, but I know that those numbers have been going down, so that’s a good thing.
The only other question I had was basically how much biomass are we implementing. I know Public Works and Services does most of the implementing of any kind of upgrades to facilities. Some of them might be in the capital budgets from our other departments, but I guess, what is the overall strategy of that biomass review? Are we continuing to add more and more biomass? Are we just about maxed out to the amount of biomass that we’re going to be doing? I guess, what’s the strategy going forward on biomass? I’d like to get an update on that.
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On the deferred maintenance, yes, when an asset is sold and no longer is usable, it’s beyond economical repair, then we replace it. At the point we replace it our deferred maintenance does drop, but we would immediately start to accumulate deferred maintenance on a new building. So, slowly, if we’re able to renew our buildings for the most part, then we would continue to chip away at the deferred maintenance but we could never get the deferred maintenance right down to nothing, as an example. As soon as a building is new and is introduced as an asset for the Government of the Northwest Territories, deferred maintenance starts to accumulate.
I would like to have the deputy minister respond to the biomass for some more detail.
Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. Mr. Guy.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. There’s no doubt that we have completed a large number of biomass projects already to date. In terms of operational systems, before this year we had 16 up and running, in place, operational. I think we had another seven underway this fiscal year that are either in operation or will be in operation before the end of the fiscal year. We have a large number right now in client managed capital projects that we continue to be delivering. Those are things like the new health centres in Norman Wells and in Hay River. The Behchoko health centre is another one, Fort Providence. As we look forward in this capital plan, we also have two biomass installations in the Sahtu region in schools in Fort Good Hope and Tulita.
As the Member has indicated, it is becoming more challenging for us to find economical or biomass installations with the short-term paybacks. When we got into biomass we were looking at five, six, seven years. Some of these now, because of the challenges around the location and the delivery of the pellets are of much longer payback, but we’re continuing to pursue them to both work with the Biomass Strategy and promote biomass growth in the territory and projects, and we believe over time in places like the Sahtu the price of pellets will come down. As we look forward, every capital project now we consider biomass as part of the standard process.
Thank you, Mr. Guy. Mr. Bouchard.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The follow-up of deferred maintenance, and I think the deferred maintenance was a lot worse, especially when we started this Assembly, but do we still feel that deferred maintenance is a strong issue. Is it an issue that’s actually costing us?
The new buildings we’re doing, like the Minister indicated, as soon as we build a new building we have deferred maintenance, so are we getting the value out of our new buildings that we’re building? Because of the volume of our deferred maintenance, is that life of those buildings getting less and less? Are we seeing that we used to need every 25 years a midlife retrofit but because of deferred maintenance that we have, the load that we currently have, are we seeing that we need that every 20 years? I guess, what kind of impact does that deferred maintenance on the assets that we currently have and the assets that we’re bringing forward today?
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. Mr. Guy.
As the Minister said, the deferred maintenance deficit has come down since we started in 2007-08. The approach we’re using combines the strategic funding to address those issues through the $5 million in capital here around life safety, deferred maintenance issues. We also are focusing the overall capital plan on deferred maintenance, so the large capital projects, as the Member has indicated, are also helping us to reduce our deferred maintenance deficit. Things like the Hay River Health Centre are complete and we will see a decrease in the deficit of deferred maintenance. As long as we can continue to maintain the new infrastructure that’s going on at the required level, then we should not see a growth in deferred maintenance on those new assets reporting in service. However, our ability to replace assets as they age has challenged the capital plan, is oversubscribed, so we will continue to have a deferred maintenance deficit, I would say, for the time being going forward, and we are confident we can continue to manage it through the strategy that we have in place today.
