Thank you, deputy minister. Committee, we are on general comments for Public Works and Services. Does committee agree to go into detail?
Detail.
We will come back to page 417 after we have gone through the detail. Page 418, Public Works and Services, revenue summary. Questions?
Agreed.
Mr. Bromley. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Could I just get confirmation about the capital transfers? Are there just no capital transfers this year and no Labour Canada agreement? Was that transferred over to another department?
Director Lewis.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. With regard to the capital transfer, that represents a depreciated replacement cost value of the asset that was transferred through devolution. So it’s a one-time identification of value.
In terms of the other item, the labour, it has actually been moved down under the boiler registration. It doesn’t really represent a payment; it represents recovery of work we do for boiler inspections for the federal government. So, it’s more accurately represented where it is. So it’s not a loss, it’s just a movement. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Director Lewis. We are on page 418, revenue summary. Questions?
Agreed.
Page 419, Public Works and Services, active position summary. Questions?
Agreed
Page 421, Public Works and Services, asset management, operations expenditure summary, $98.885 million. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I know asset management is obviously a huge program for the government. This division has been doing a lot of work on the utilities and so on. Where are we at on the utility side for asset maintenance, or is that in another division? The intent of moving it all into this department was to be able to see where the opportunities for savings were and act on those. I’m just wondering where we are on that.
Also, there is a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions element to that, which is in this division. If I could just get general comments on where we’re at with respect to our assets and opportunities to shift them over to renewable energy and increase efficiencies. I know we have been very active for at least seven or eight years. How are we doing? Where are we at? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Deputy Minister Guy.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. That’s a large question, but our utilities are shown on this page. We did consolidate utilities a number of years ago in this department and that was primarily driven with the intention to better manage and track our utilities and seek opportunities to reduce those costs. We have done a lot of work in that area. We have an energy management specialist in that department who analyses the building consumption on all building assets. That information is what we used to develop our work plan for the Capital Asset Retrofit Program, so we look for projects, energy investments that can provide a payback through the utility savings that you see here. So that’s been working well for us.
We do publish the results in our annual general report, so we provide a lot of detail on the utilities and where we spend our utility money and how we’ve recovered and made those savings through the various projects.
As we move forward, we continue to look to biomass as one of the biggest opportunities for us to achieve both the greenhouse gas savings and the reduction in utility costs. We had a number of biomass boilers come on line this year that are doing exactly that for us. The boiler in the new office building in Yellowknife is up and operating, and now that is heating that facility as well as the Stuart Hodgson Building and the Laing Building. So, I think there’s about $297,000 litres of fuel that will be offset through that boiler alone.
Other opportunities we’re looking for is there continues to be leaps and bounds in some of the technology that we discounted a number of years ago, so we have to go back and look at things around lighting. We can do a lighting upgrade. Five years ago it may not have been economical, but this year it is. So we go back and revisit those decisions that we’ve made in the past. LED lighting is probably one of the biggest opportunities for us going forward. We’re starting to see some technology there that we may be able to use in general purpose office space and we’re starting to do some demonstration projects around that. We will have some LED lighting in the new building, as well, to test its performance and we’re trying some in other places.
Those are some of the activities we have underway in that area.
Thank you, Deputy Minister. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you. I get the sense that there are still lots of areas for investments and pretty positive payback periods and returns. On the utilities side, I’m just a little bit surprised at the increase of $2.5 million given our focus on this, especially when our fuel costs are down. The deputy minister has mentioned LED lighting and so on, and I have to say I’ve just put that into my kitchen and I’m pretty amazed with some efficiencies and still some very good lighting.
Is this simply new assets that are being brought on stream and if I can get an update on that? Like I say, $2.5 million given reduction in fuel costs and some of the new technology, we know what’s happening on that front. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Madam Chair. The majority of those increases are forced growth: $838,000 funding for new electrical rate increase by NWT Power Corp, $1.2 million in funding for a new YK office building, the Norman Wells Health Centre, the Hay River Health Centre and the new trade shops in Fort Smith and Fort Simpson. So when all of those are online the next fiscal year, we’re going to start to see that we’re going to need that money for the utilities.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Mr. Bromley.
I’ll leave it at that, Madam Chair. I know there are many efforts around the world now for zero consumption, zero net consumption buildings and I know this department is interested in making progress in that direction. So, I’ll look forward to further gains there. I’ll leave it at that. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Page 421, asset management, operations expenditure summary, $98.885 million.
Agreed.
Thank you. Page 422, asset management, active positions, information item only.
Agreed.
Thank you. Page 425, directorate, operations expenditure summary, $11.874 million. Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to again zone in on the responsibility of the directorate under the Occupational Health and Safety Program and its activities. Through procured services, a lot of the contractors now go through this division for various functions and cross-departmental initiatives. So, to the question, do we have, or does PWS, under procured shared services, have a contractor management system in place? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Mr. Guy.
Thank you, Madam Chair. At the moment we don’t have anything that would be considered a contractor management system. I’m not 100 percent sure what type of system is being referred to, but as I said earlier, the new procurement modules have a registration process where we can track and register contractors. So it would be one opportunity for that type of system in the future. Thank you.
The reason for my questioning is that I’m fully aware that the department and the government do not have a contractor management system. We’ve got a voluntary system where, as you’ve heard, companies will come and register themselves. So, what are the minimum standards that we are asking these companies to have in terms of requirements for safety? Thank you.
Contractors are required to register with WSCC to meet the requirements of the Safety Act of the WSCC. Thank you.
The requirements of a WSCC or actually being an active participant with the WSCC in good standing, all that means is that you’re paid in full. That’s all part of having a WSCC certification. It doesn’t preclude the fact that you’re supposed to have minimum levels of standards.
Let me liken our sister province to the south of us here. Alberta has numerous programs in place. It has what is referred to as a Health and Safety Management System where the requirements, the company has management leadership and organizational commitment, has hazard identification and assessment hazard control, worksite inspections provided, worker competency and training, incident reporting investigation, emergency response planning and program administration. These are the basic requirements that anyone wanting to work for the government as a contractor has to have, including what is referred to as partnerships in injury reduction programs, which is a voluntary program. These are just various tools that other jurisdictions have in order to have the competencies in place so that when the Government of Alberta is working with contractors through its shared services and procurement, we know that these companies are up to par and have a full, engaged Occupational Health and Safety system.
So, to the question: if the government is acting as a principal contractor and we may be obligated to indemnify agents or contractors while working for the government and their responsibilities, by what virtue do we have to guarantee that these companies are living up to the level of safety standards that we would think they’d have?
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Minister Beaulieu.
Thank you, Madam Chair. We are beginning to move into a lot of safety areas as we continue to work with the Workers’ Safety Commission. We have contracts in place where when a contractor gets on a site, they would have to have a safety plan for the people on site. We don’t believe that WSCC is only there to collect premiums. Actually, we believe that people who are in construction are different than individuals who may be in retail and the requirement for having some safety plan in place on a construction site versus something that just may protect employees against some lighter duty injuries. I know that there are more stringent rules surrounding what we, as this department, monitor are heavy construction sites, building construction sites, large buildings. Aside from that, I’m going to ask the deputy minister to provide more detail on what we need in order for a contractor to get on site and before a contractor is able to have an actual contract for constructing one of our buildings. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. Mr. Guy.
Through procurement shared services our standard contract documents lay out what the requirements are on all aspects of the contract including roles and responsibilities for the contractor around safety. We are looking at the working around the principal contractor. I think that was raised in part of the question, and that’s one of the things we are doing on our contract template, is to review the application and that wording to address those issues that the Member has raised.
We’re also working closely with the Safety Association to strengthen the wording in our contract documents and with the Construction Association around requirements for contractors to have safety plans in place while we do our work. On our large construction projects and our buildings and works projects we do have requirements for safety meetings and site meetings, and we do have those requirements in the administration side of the contract.
Procurement shared services also covers goods and services and contracts other than construction contracts, as well, so it’s responsible for the tendering, the procurement and the template documents.
Thank you, Mr. Guy. Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m hearing that we’re working towards something, but we don’t have anything. That’s what I’m hearing. To me, this is a huge concern. I’ve brought this up on the floor of the House many times. The court system has also indicated that the government is lacking, if I may remind the department and the Minister here. What is it going to take if we’re going to do this right and if we’re going to get a proper contractor management system in place where requirements are clearly spelled out in a very firm policy, much like we see in every other province in Canada? Why is it a year later – we’ve had procured shared services for one year now. Why is that we cannot have that level of detail so that we can, by virtue, be very clear to anyone who is doing contractual obligations, who is signing up on RFPs, who is doing any type of site work whether it’s on construction on a road or in a building, that we have a policy in place that deals specifically with what our requirements are, especially if we’re the principal contractor? When are we going to get this in place?
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Minister Beaulieu.
Thank you, Madam Chair. This is a process. If we were to introduce, say, an association of some sort and say that all contractors must be certified under this system as of today, we would be eliminating the majority of our contractors in the small communities. We would be eliminating the majority of our contractors in the NWT, period.
We need to work with the contractors. We need to move into this process. Eventually we do hope to have everyone covered under some sort of certification indicating that they do have safety certification to be on any job site, but how we introduce that does take some time. We need to ensure that we’re in touch with all contractors that work for us.
When you consider that anybody that could be cleaning our offices and cleaning this building, right to individual contractors that are on site on our biggest jobs, if we’re going to make sure that every one of those people are certified before they get on site, like I said, we will be eliminating a lot of people.
We need to work with our contractors. We’ve developed these contractors over the years. Now, the safety is an important issue and we’re moving towards that. We’re moving into that direction, but to have a drop dead date and say everybody has to be certified at this point would not work. We would essentially eliminate too many of our contractors and we would almost come to a standstill unless we’re bringing contractors up from the South.
We will commit to having the majority of the individuals safety certified to be on our sites by the end of the next fiscal year. If we have the majority of them done and it’s not going to affect our business at hand, then we’re able to move beyond that. We’re able to say then that if most people are certified, then we’re able to put in the contract that you must be certified in order to do this job.
Just as an example, if we have a building under construction and we indicate that the principal contractor, which could be us, but the principal contractor, the main contractor, the general contractor on site has to be certified, then every single individual contractor, big and small, that goes on site has to be certified. We have to be aware of that as well.
Once we move into this area and we start making this a hard and fast rule for contractors in the Northwest Territories with government programs and we make that decision, there’s no turning back, so we have to move cautiously to make sure we’re not leaving people out in the cold.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Mr. Dolynny, your time is up. Directorate, operations expenditure summary, $11.874 million. Mr. Bromley.
I don’t see it here but I believe this division would deal with legislation. Am I correct in that assumption?
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Beaulieu.
Yes, that is correct.
Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. Mr. Bromley.
Thanks, Madam Chair. I know the Minister and I had a conversation in the House here about developing an energy efficiency act, and I know the Minister is aware that the most recent Energy Charrette once again recommended both in the short term and the medium term that we get in place an energy efficiency act. Can I ask, is that budgeted for in this budget?
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. Guy.
Thank you, Madam Chair. That legislation would be done through the directorate through this division, and any work on a specific piece of a legislation, such as an energy efficiency act, would be done through the policy division or the policy section in the energy division, so it would be an energy policy that would be developed there and then we’d run it through the directorate.
At this point, the response to the charrette is still being completed and then out of that response it would become a work plan for any of the initiatives that are identified in there, including an act. At this point there is nothing in this budget for an energy efficiency act.
Of course, that report is due any day. It’s a bit of a chicken and egg thing here. I think we’re talking about cost of living and so on for our people. Is there the flexibility, should the report confirm what we have hired experts to tell us, and I assume it would, that we would have the capacity to get going on that legislation pronto?
