Thank you, Madam Speaker. Presently through the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs, we require every single municipality to have an asset management plan. This essentially lists every single asset and piece of infrastructure they own, its operation and maintenance, and then a life cycle replacement cost. And obviously we would require this to be public because we don't let municipalities do things incamera. But the GNWT, as far as I know, doesn't have any asset management plan. The closest thing we have is a 20year capital needs assessment which lists the assets we own and what we could relatively expect to replace over 20 years. This is not I must admit I haven't seen a recent version of this, and it's not a public document. So my question for the Minister of Finance is whether that is something she would be willing to publish? Thank you.
Thank you, Member. Minister of Finance.
Thank you, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, I think this question actually came up, or a version of it, during Committee of the Whole. And the Members were assured there is an asset management plan, and there is a very thorough process by which we are keeping track of all of the assets of the government and the capital needs and any, you know, needs for maintenance, etcetera, through all the departments, particularly the Department of Infrastructure.
Now with respect to where the question actually got to, which is whether or not we'll be publishing a 20year capital or the 20year capital needs assessment, Madam Speaker, again as I think I said earlier in COW this session, that's a snapshot in time. It's not a detailed document. Actually, we did do a bit of a scan because this conversation does come up every session, did do a bit of a jurisdictional scan and we were sitting quite nicely in the middle of the pack. Most of the other jurisdictions we looked at provide similarly highlevel documents. Member gave me a heads up on Alberta, for example. Not a single dollar figure is in that, Madam Speaker. It's really just meant to be a snapshot. And in appendix B of the capital plan, you can actually look there and see exactly how we developed that capital plan and the priorities therein. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
I think I'll have to ask Infrastructure whether they have an asset management plan and will make it public. I'll put them on notice there.
Okay, so my understanding is then we have a fiveyear needs assessment as well which is a bit less of a snapshot in time and that it perhaps some financial thinking has actually gone into it, and if you've made it into the fiveyear needs assessment, probably much more likely to actually be funded. Is this document something the Minister is willing to publish?
Thank you, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, Members of the House do receive the fiveyear plan. Again, consensus government's a little bit different. This isn't necessarily how it would happen in a lot of governments elsewhere in Canada. But we do have that opportunity here to do things a bit differently. So Members do receive that. The public doesn't get a copy of the fiveyear plan, and the real and simple reason for that is the concern around ensuring fairness in the procurement process. If a total budget is put forward on a project, then there is a live concern amongst procurement that, in fact, every bid's going to bid to the project price rather than ensuring a competitive process in tendering. So that's the reason the plan doesn't get published, Madam Speaker. We have tried to put some more information out this year. There was a graphic included, for example, in the capital plan that was provided. So, you know, again trying to get a bit more information out and make it more user friendly. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
Yeah, thank you, Madam Speaker. The other document which I would like to see, which I'm actually not sure exists I know we have a fiveyear needs assessment showing what we need. But whether we have a multiyear capital plan? I note I can go to the infrastructure acquisition plan and it shows we are currently planning to spend $1.4 billion in the future years. But there's certainly nothing that shows what we've already spent, the listing projects, whether things are on time, whether things are completed, if something gets completed well, we don't ever actually know that and we certainly never see a final cost of any project publicly listed anywhere. So I think some sort of planning document would be very helpful. Is the Minister willing to create a multiyear capital plan? Thank you, Madam Speaker.
Thank you, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, I'm going to take a bit from my colleague down the way here and the Minister of Infrastructure. The Department of Infrastructure really does have the lead for a large portion of the capital projects that go through, and that department, in response to concerns like this, is actually developing a dashboard. It will be a public dashboard and will be providing exactly the kind of synopsis that the Member's describing. And I can certainly commit to keep him updated as to the progress on that dashboard, or I'm sure my colleague will. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Find supplementary. Member for Yellowknife North.
Yeah, thank you, Madam Speaker. Yeah, and I'd be very interested to know whether Infrastructure is going to include the projects that don't fall under it. You know, I know we're building quite a number of longterm care facilities under Health and Social Services that not under Infrastructure, as an example.
And lastly, in our capital plan, we get one sentence description of projects, and then what happens is Members kind of ask, you know, what's going on with this playground fencing? Or we just ask these tedious questions that takes us hours and hours of review to get any information out there publicly. But I know that the departments have some sort of brief description more than one sentence. And I'm just wondering if those descriptions would be something the Minister would be willing to publish with future capital plans. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
Thank you, Madam Speaker. So, again, Madam Speaker, that unusual consensus government process is that Members who would be on these sort of, quote unquote, "other side of the House" do get what are called substantiation sheets. That does give a fair bit of detail about upcoming projects. And it does include the budgetary detail that, again, right now most governments would consider to be not part of good procurement practice to be sharing publicly. So that's why those don't go out. But the point of the dashboard a part of the dashboard, the purpose of the dashboard I was just describing, is exactly that, to give that snapshot of where projects are at and what has been spent on them. So, again, looking forward to having that out in public so that hopefully there will come a year where we don't have to have this conversation during the capital session. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
Thank you. Oral questions. Member for Kam Lake.
