Agreed.
Thank you, committee. Please turn to page 22, water management and monitoring. There is an information item on page 23. Comments or questions? Seeing none, I will call the item. Environment and Natural Resources, water management and monitoring, infrastructure investments, $125,000. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. Wildlife, on page 24. There is an information item on page 25. Mr. Vanthuyne.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a basic question I am trying to get a little bit of an understanding on. We see in here a couple of line items with regard to some new patrol vehicles. Is it possible for the department, maybe, to just give us a little explanation on how they undertake their fleet management and describe for us a little bit about how the life cycle of vehicles is managed, in this instance, by the department of ENR, but even in the general context would be appreciated. I am just trying to understand the degree of the fleets that we use in our departments and to what extent we are rotating them out. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Vanthuyne. Dr. Dragon.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Various trucks, depending on what they are used for and in what capacity, we have trucks that go on winter roads and require heavy duty vehicles, suspensions that are going on winter roads, that sort of thing.
The items mentioned here in the budget are actually patrol trucks that we replace on a ten-year rotation. If they have to be rotated before then, then we do, but these trucks typically are all-terrain. They have heavy duty frames and suspensions. They are typically three-quarter ton vehicles, and then they have the associated winches, light bars, headache racks, and radios. This is why they are a little bit more expensive, but typically, we have them anywhere from five to ten years. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for that. Mr. Vanthuyne.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the response. I know, for sure, Mr. Marchiori is very familiar with this line of questioning. In my past position as a city councillor, we often grilled him with regard to our fleet management, but one of the things that would be nice to see, somewhere in the budget, the department's list of fleet so that we can kind of get a sense of the lifespan of each one of these kind of vehicles and what kind of rotation they are on, just so that we get a better perspective from a budgetary perspective, I guess, on how we manage our fleet. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you. Minister.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. If that is the type of information that committee would like to see as we go before committee, debating the capital budget before we get to the floor, maybe we can provide that type of information rather than having it here, if that would be the wish of committee. That way, they will have a general idea of the life cycle during the debate of the capital estimates before we bring them on the floor, if that works for committee. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister. Seeing nothing further, I will call this item. Environment and Natural Resources, wildlife, infrastructure investments, $1,009,000. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. Please return to page 16. Environment and Natural Resources, total capital estimates, $2,423,000. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. This concludes our consideration of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. I want to thank the witnesses. Sergeant-at-Arms, you may escort the witnesses from the Chamber. Minister, you may take your usual seat.
Committee, we have next agreed to consider the Department of Lands, which begins on page 55 of the capital estimates. I will turn to Minister Sebert for any opening comments. Actually, you know what? We are not doing opening comments; I just remembered. I will ask Minister Sebert to take his seat at the witness table. Sergeant-at-Arms, please escort the witnesses into the Chamber.
Minister, would you please introduce your witnesses for the record?
Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. To my left, I have Brenda Hilderman, director of finance, and to my right, Willard Hagen, deputy Minister.
Thank you. Committee, we will defer the departmental total until after consideration of the activity summaries, the first of which is on page 56, Informatics Shared Service Centre. First, I have Mr. Vanthuyne.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the effort that we are putting in with regard to the enterprise licensing and permitting, but we can see here that this is going to be a cross-departmental initiative. Maybe the department can start by explaining a little bit about Lands' role in particular in this, and is it strictly a Lands budget line item, or are all of these other departments also contributing to this enterprise licensing and permitting?
Then, also, where will it be centred? Is this going to be something that is going to be an online thing that is accessible to the public? Is this just interdepartmental improvements? If we can get some elaboration on this particular line item, it would be appreciated. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Vanthuyne. Just so everyone is on the same page, it is page 57 that contains some of the details that Mr. Vanthuyne just referenced. I will turn to the Minister. Minister Sebert.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. This information system project is a collaborative effort between several departments, including Lands, ITI, ENR, and Finance, and the enterprise licensing and permitting system will use common components to enable them to implement business processes.
Perhaps, with respect to the other portion of the question, I could turn it over to Ms. Hilderman. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Ms. Hilderman.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Informatics Shared Service Centre is one of the activities within Lands and provides services, as the Minister mentioned, to ENR, ITI, and Lands. Initially, this information system capital project was appropriated originally in our 2018-2019 capital estimates, and this is for year two of the two-year project. It is a common platform for licences and permits. Initially, hopefully in this fiscal year, they will implement ten licences and permits, and then another 30 within year two of the capital project, 2019-2020. Once those are in place, it then is a common platform that they will build on that and provide services for other departments to the public through this same common platform. Thank you.
Thank you. Minister, you'd like to add something?
Yes. The whole purpose of this of course is to reduce costs of maintaining separate systems across departments, and there was a mention of licences and permits. There's quite a number of them from fishing licence to pesticide business permits, so, hopefully, this will lead to a more efficient and less costly system. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Mr. Vanthuyne.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the insight with regard to the enterprise licensing and permitting contribution that we're making. Let's just then for a moment jump down for some clarification purposes to "Land Tenure Optimization System." It notes that this is to rationalize five systems that currently handle the land tenure information and processes, and it's going to create a single platform. Can we get a better understanding of what the five systems currently are and how this single platform will manage these five systems? Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Vanthuyne. Minister.
Yes. The five systems that we currently have do have support challenges, and this system will address this risk by providing a common platform that will support several territorial lands surface, Commissioner's lands surface, oil and gas subsurface, the Mining Recorder's Office subsurface, and the Forest Management Division's surface. Hopefully, this will be at a lower capital cost, addressing issues of cost, and will be a more efficient and less costly system.
Also, I understand that it's a mandate item that we will improve collaboration for easier access to the government programs and services online, so this is part of our Mandate Commitment 533, apparently. So this makes sense quite apart from being a mandate item, makes sense from an economic and user point of view. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Seeing nothing further, I will call this item. Lands, Informatics shared service centre, infrastructure investment, $698,000. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. Please turn to page 58, operations. There's an associated information item on page 59. I'll call the item. Lands, operations, infrastructure investments, $234,000. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. There's nothing on planning coordination, so we will return to page 55 to consider the total. Lands, total capital estimates, $932,000. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. I want to thank the Minister and the witnesses. Sergeant-at-Arms, you may escort the witnesses from the Chamber.
Committee, we have next agreed to consider the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs, found on page 61. I will ask the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs, Minister Moses, to take a seat at the witness table. Sergeant-at-Arms, please escort the witnesses into the Chamber.
Minister Moses, would you please introduce your witness to the House.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's Mr. Robert Tordiff, the assistant deputy minister for MACA. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Welcome to the witness. Committee, we will defer consideration of the departmental total until after consideration of the activity summaries, the first of which is on page 64, with an associated information item on page 65. Mr. Vanthuyne.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, as the Minister is well aware, the NWT Association of Communities and a number of its members have identified shortfalls year over year as it relates to an undertaking that we took back in 2014 to identify community needs. I think, at the time, it was about a $40-million-a-year shortfall. That was back in 2014. The City of Yellowknife claims to have received an annual shortfall of about $11 million. Of course, the City of Yellowknife is just weeks away from going into its budgetary process, and they're naturally going to raise this issue again, and they're going to point the finger to our government as it relates to not making the commitment to try to lessen this gap.
So, you know, on page 64 this is where we see the contribution. It's $29 million and it's to all of the communities. I just want to know from the department if they're doing some work as it relates to lessening the gap. If they are, what is that? If they're not, then what are some of the ways in which we can potentially strive towards overcoming this significant gap? Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you. Minister Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I did hear the Members' comments, all of them that made general comments to the Minister of Finance's opening remarks. We do know this is a concern, and I did hear it when I did become Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs, when I did sit with the NWTAC's executive. This year, there is a small increase in the funding for O and M as well as, I believe, water and sewer services. Since, I think, 2014, there has been small incremental increases each year. This funding really is used for core needs of the community, and I know we need to find ways to address that. As you heard with the Minister of Finance, we try to allocate some of our dollars, and some of the communities actually use some of their CPF funding to try to leverage federal dollars, as well. Some of the agreements and federal funding that we are looking for and looking at is obviously the new Building Canada Plan, Phase 1 and Phase 2 of the Investing in Canada Infrastructure Plan as well. So we're looking at opportunities that we can look at closing some of the gaps through trying to leverage some of that federal funding.
As we all know, there's been new elections that just happened, and we are committed to sitting down with the new membership, looking at addressing this by developing a strategy. As Members know, during business planning session I did mention we have put that strategy on hold until the elections were done. Hopefully, we should have that strategy in place in the early new year. We will share it with the NWTAC as well as committee then.
Through you, Mr. Chair, maybe I can ask my assistant deputy minister if there's any other further information he'd like to share with the committee. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Mr. Tordiff.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. In response to the question with respect to what is MACA doing to help address the issue, we have seen an increase in the capital budget that we allocate to communities. In addition to that, we have implemented a number of programs that are designed to help extend the useful life and the time for replacement for much of the communities' capital infrastructure, including increased efforts around capital planning and the implementation of a new asset management program.
Thank you. Mr. Vanthuyne.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to be genuine in respecting and appreciating the department's efforts. I think they undertook some really good work, with the NWTAC and some community members and what-have-you, back in 2014 when we underwent the evaluation that ultimately identified this gap.
I am convinced, and this is going to be more of a comment, that the government, given the pressures that we have on our budget and the stretch dollars that we have, that we really, in fact, are never going to be able to overcome this, because the demands for capital projects within the communities is, as was mentioned, growing, but then, so is the rate of inflation on all of this stuff. Based on what allocations we have available and how all of us in this House realize how tight this budget is year-over-year, I just don't ever foresee how we are going to remove this infrastructure gap or this funding gap.
It is my belief that the only way we are going to be able to do that is if we -- and I will be raising this in a number of different ways over the next little while, but the Territorial Formula Financing agreement that we have with the federal government has to be renegotiated with, and it is with the purview of these kinds of shortfalls in mind that we have to renegotiate that. I don't think, on a per capita basis, that we need to request more money, but we certainly need to give consideration to, when we generate our own-source revenues, that it doesn't get clawed back by the federal government. They need to recognize that these are the kinds of gaps that we need to fill and that that is a process that we have to go through and have a heart-to-heart.
I recognize that TFF, I think, is up for review in 2019. Although the federal government has given early indicators that they are going to maintain status quo, I would argue that that is not satisfactory, and this is a primary example as to why we have to renegotiate that, or we will never fulfill this gap. Those are my comments. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Vanthuyne. There were comments. Would the Minister care to respond?
No, I appreciate the honesty and the comments made by the Member. As I mentioned, one fund that we are looking at is the Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program that would help address some of the water and possibility sewage needs some of our communities.
The little increase that we did get in this budget will look at priorities of which municipalities need their infrastructure upgraded. We are going to be looking at that when this budget passes, but I really appreciate the Member's comments. Thank you.
Thank you. Next, I have Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, along the same line of the previous Member, I am trying to sort out how the whole system works. Is there a situation where, when you are trying to fulfill the capital deficit in the municipalities that have capital deficits, you are removing money from other communities that are not considered to have a capital deficit? Thank you.
Thank you. Minister.
