EdinburghNLP/nunavut-hansard-plusplus huggingface dataset:
The intention is that these telehandlers will become part of the LHOs’ equipment for performing their maintenance duties.
Part of what we want to ensure was not just the protection of the equipment for the installation or the assembly of the SIP panels but also to ensure that the LHO staff received proper safety operating training before they were given the keys to the equipment.
Mr. Barriault must have been reading my mind because if you’re having difficulty training apprentices, where you have the assistance of the Nunavut Arctic College and other resources like that, how do you plan to train local housing authority people on safely operating these vehicles? Is there some type of a plan or are you contracting someone to do the training?
Will people be flown out? Will it be one person in the community doing it? Could you explain and expand on that?
Hon. Tagak Curley: Again I want to remind the committee that our people, prominently the Inuit people, really actually are very mechanically quite good operators. These are simple machines to operate; they are not complicated.
The member is shaking his head; he is shaking his head to Nunavutmiut.
Most drivers with a certain type of licence required of heavy equipment operators can easily be trained to operate them.
These are not complicated machines. These are “standardly” very handy equipment to have around, particularly for housing maintenance operators.
They are safer than other mechanical, you know, normally handled by individuals for safety reasons. In my region, no one is complaining in having these telehandlers.
They have become the standard of the construction industry and maintenance companies.
They are very valuable equipment to have.
To try and devise something that is very elaborate, very costly training that has to be certified by somebody, it’s not going to be that kind of training.
So if the member has something that he wants to offer to us, we will take it, but these are simple equipment.
When I say simple equipment, I am saying it because I am a trained heavy equipment operator, so I know about those machineries.
When we initially talked about the New Holland telehandlers, I remember asking the minister of the day who was responsible for WSCC whether he could contact them and find out if these vehicles were up to standard and whether they would be potentially harmful to people who are using them.
He mentioned that no one had been hurt yet, so he couldn’t answer that.
But in the reply from the minister of the day for the Nunavut Housing Corporation, when it was Minister Tootoo, he had mentioned that the reason that they had to stop using the New Holland telehandlers was because of safety issues that the WSCC had brought forward.
To me, I am just trying to… . Again, I am concerned and worried about the safety of our people in the communities who aren’t properly trained on these pieces of equipment, which you say are simple, but if there is someone who ends up being hurt, who is ultimately responsible? Would it be the Nunavut Housing Corporation for not training them or would it be the local housing authorities for not training them?
Hon. Tagak Curley: Thank you. I appreciate the member’s passionate concern about safety, but I think the industry is way ahead of you, hon. member. Most contractors and maintenance groups are required to have a safety committee.
The safety committee members within these organizations, including even the staff of this Assembly have such a safety committee, are normally required to meet every so often, particularly when construction is going on, weekly meetings at least or more, if all possible.
I am not talking about this particular type of telehandler or this versus that one; I am just speaking in general.
These are not complicated. They are no more complicated than running a CAT.
If he is trying to indicate to me that particular brand of telehandler is worse than the other one, we would love to have that because if there are more stringent training requirements, sure they will be made.
By and large, those licensed operators, particularly the heavy equipment operators, who have a licence to operate such a class of vehicles, very quickly are able to… .
Safety is number one that we’re not going to compromise. Our project managers are well informed of those because they are required to make sure the contractors abide by safety regulations, and we’re not about to compromise on those principles.
Mr. Elliott: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I don’t think Mr. Curley answered my question that I was asking.
Again, by spending time on some of the sites where the Nunavut Housing Trust is going on, I realize they do have health and safety meetings, and I think that is great, but we are turning these telehandlers over to the local housing authorities.
I am not judging which telehandler was better and which telehandler wasn’t, I am just saying that these are very technical pieces of machinery that have to be balanced in a certain way.
If you lift too much when the arm is extended, it falls over and people could be hurt.
I am just thinking too ahead that, say a local housing authority says, “We want to do some safety training and teach our employees how to use these telehandlers properly,” and the local housing authority goes to the Nunavut Housing Corporation and asks for money.
Again, since we had to find $60 million already and we are going to have to find $50 million more, there is no money to do training to use these because the money has been over-committed.
My concern is that people will be using these machines without the proper training to use them.
Again my question is: if someone is hurt using one of these pieces of machinery, will it be the responsibility of the local housing authority or will it be the responsibility of the Nunavut Housing Corporation?
I appreciate the member’s passionate, and I am assuming he is passionate, concern about that.
I don’t want to speculate that an accident will happen operating this type of unit. There may be a number of other incidents where accidents will occur but, to me, it’s hypothetical right now.
Safety is the number one aspect of any major construction or project that involves a heavy technical aspect.
We will not compromise on that.
The corporation has a number of programs and it has instituted part of the safety provisions in it, and so on.
Very basic training provisions can be beefed up without elaborately establishing complex training provisions.
To answer further to the details, I’ll have Mr. Barriault respond to that.
The Nunavut Housing Corporation has developed some standard operating procedures and safety regulations for the use of this equipment.
We have developed these in consultation with WSCC to ensure it meets with their requirements.
As the member has noted, there are some things that operators have to keep in mind, including tipping points, for example, on this equipment.
Likewise, with any equipment used by LHO staff or Housing Corporation staff, the operators have to be aware of the limitations of whatever the equipment is, whether it’s a circular saw or whether it’s a telehandler.
In terms of occupational health and safety responsibility, that is a shared responsibility under the Safety Act of Nunavut. So we will be working closely with our LHOs to ensure that all equipment is operated safely and that no one is operating the equipment unless they are qualified to do so.
Under the statement of expenditures for the Nunavut Housing Trust, April 1 of 2006 to February 28, 2010, on page 1 for the breakdown of expenditures under other, there is $5,651,000 that was grouped under that category.
Could the minister expand on what expenses fell under that category?
Mr. Barriault: I will give her that.
Chairman: Ms. Kimball.
Other includes some miscellaneous costs. In some cases, there was capitalized labour from the district offices on things like site supervision and that sort of thing.
So miscellaneous is just a bunch of miscellaneous items.
Going forward, as we’re tracking things under SIP, we’re ensuring that other is used less and that things be properly classified between labour and material, so some of it is encoding issues as well with NHT.
Going back to the training, the minister was mentioning the idea of hiring someone to work together to coordinate all of the apprentices and keep track of what level they’re at and what training they need to do. For the Nunavut Housing Trust and Affordable Housing Initiative, was someone hired in a position to help with paperwork or liaison between Nunavut Arctic College and the Department of Education to assist with getting the apprentices through their apprenticeships?
With the Nunavut Housing Trust, the main thing that the Nunavut Housing Corporation provided was opportunity.
We sponsored some training programs through Nunavut Arctic College and we put in some requirements for Inuit content within the labour contracts that were issued. From there, the tracking of apprentices continued to be through the Department of Education, through the registrar and the apprentices.
There were staff within the Housing Corporation who were involved doing liaison with the Nunavut Arctic College.
However, reports which were produced trying to use their own data were proven to be unreliable as the actual tracking and logging of hours were done through the Department of Education.
As such, moving forward, we had to rely on the Department of Education to track those numbers, so those numbers are not registered with us.
The apprentices were not Nunavut Housing Corporation employees but, in fact, employees of the contractors performing the work.
The main tracking of their hours was through their process of logging their hours with the Apprenticeship Division of the Department of Education.
In terms of the expenses for the Nunavut Housing Trust, obviously from the report, the materials were the highest. The most dollar value was spent on the actual materials purchased.
I was wondering if the minister could explain exactly how materials were purchased in the past and how materials are purchased now to give us an idea of what has changed within your corporation to ensure that “misordering”… .
Again I go back to the first year. I remember a lot of materials were not on the ship and a lot of the materials were flown up.
What controls are in place?
Again, to be honest and fair with the committee, it was very difficult to account for some mistakes that were made by the previous administration, in 2006 to be exact and 2007, where multiple number of mismanagement started to occur, particularly with the starting of the logistics contracts and marshalling contracts.
There was a tender at that time that changed the whole northern owned companies. They had to be taken out of the contract because they weren’t delivering anything and there were massive confusion going on.
When that transfer occurred, there were a number of very serious, costly involved, moves to re-tender and as a result, moved down to Ontario.
From what I understood, sitting from the other side at that time, for instance, the procurement side of the corporation, when I was sitting at that side at that time, it was much more independently ordering tenders right across the county, instead of maybe entering into using some of the larger suppliers for materials.
Therefore, the massive confusion occurred because they were independently shipped to Ontario and that contributed, I think, to a number of delays.
What exactly happened with the 2007 mix-up really requires, I think, much more study in my view, but Mr. Barriault may have some knowledge of it and, if so, he can explain what he knows about that.
Again, as Mr. Curley has noted, I’ll be commenting based on what I have been able to ascertain as most of these practices occurred before I began with the corporation here in this capacity.
As best as I can understand it, the intention with marshalling had been to reduce costs towards the Housing Corporation or housing trust delivery.
By purchasing materials, such as drywall or plywood, directly from manufacturers of those products, so tendering for those and then breaking them down in bulk through the marshaller afterwards, the expectation had been that cost savings would be realized, as opposed to purchasing these materials from general material suppliers who were adding their costs and mark-ups, and so on.
It created a complicated supply chain.
Some of the materials which were being delivered, pre-packaged by house, were also going through the marshallers.
That is a practice which we stopped for this last year of delivery. So materials pre-packaged by house, by community, were delivered directly to the docks rather than through the marshallers.
So the general practice for material purchasing was to go to public tender and to break it down by commodity groups. The only exception to this was to sole source with manufacturers who were the only known manufacturer of certain products.
One example of that are the Triodetic space frame foundations, which has only one manufacturer.
In terms of doing business differently, I guess one of the things we’re trying to determine is whether there has been adequate change within the structure, the ordering, and the handling of the Nunavut Housing Corporation so that we don’t incur any more overspending.
Could you sort of speak to what has changed to ensure that this doesn’t happen again now, today?
Again I want to be fair to the member, but these are technical issues and being a non-technical politician, sometimes it’s really quite typical to get a clear picture and understanding.
It takes a lot of time and practise.
I know that when we are busy with the infrastructure projects, there are companies that specialize in bulk buying. They have the purchasing power that can reduce the number of materials, instead of going to some of the manufacturers, as some of the previous managers did, which can add up to thousands of manufacturers, instead of going to some of the larger independent suppliers that may have access to various types of material. They, in a sense, cut down lot of this middleman and middle-managed groups here and there to simplify shipping as well as the marshalling.
So that may be one route to go, but certainly the corporation will have time because we don’t have any major commitments now other than completing all of these units that are out in Nunavut communities. So once all of the restructuring as well as the financial controls are stabilized, that is something the management is going to be charged with.
How best to present the best delivery and procurement is number one that is going to have to be evaluated and assessed properly.
It should be better simplified and make it more cost-effective for the corporation.
There will be options, no doubt, discussed not only by the corporation management but as well as the cabinet. Thank you.
I’m not quite sure. Is the minister saying that nothing has been changed or that I’m too simple to understand the changes that are being made?
Hon. Tagak Curley (interpretation): Perhaps if I speak directly to the member in Inuktitut, then he can grasp the meaning behind my previous statement.
I am unsure as to whether he understands since I spoke largely in technical terms, but the terms are hard to grasp for the average layperson.
If the member wants to learn about the industry, then he will have to learn about all of the aspects of the construction industry and not just the corporation’s practices as it relates to housing.
At this time, with the materials already shipped to the communities, we can no longer buy materials in bulk since we do not even have 100 or even 20 new units to be constructed.
All of the materials have been shipped to the communities.
I think he understands Inuktitut, so I am trying to tell the member that this is what we have to take into consideration, especially if we do not want to repeat our mistakes in the past, which exacerbated the overall costs. We will have to review our options and look at our alternatives as a corporation.
They will have to carefully review the issues that caused this. Once these issues have been resolved, we will make them available.
I hope that he can understand me.
Mr. Elliott: It is, Mr. Chairman, and I thank you for that explanation.
Again, the corporation has had four years to think about and determine what the best way is to fix some of the problems we have within the corporation in terms of purchasing and over-committing money.
I would have hoped that after four years, there would be at least one example that could be explained as to a change in the way things are being done to ensure that more money is not over-committed to projects, whether they are $100 million projects or $200,000 projects.
Going back to 2007, the Auditor General of Canada reported that there were some problems within the Nunavut Housing Corporation in terms of staff and human resource capacity issues.
At that time, did the administration of the day mention to cabinet or request an increase in the number of PYs to be able to help combat some of the problems that they may have foreseen?
The hon. member must be kidding in asking me to account for the previous administration as well as the president, who can no longer explain exactly that here.
But I think there have been, over time, a steady number of increments to technical, particularly the district offices.  In terms of exact numbers, the project team requires additional help, yes.
I think we have at least three regions and from time to time, there are times they require more personnel in a number of project delivery groups.
Mr. Barriault has probably read up on the history and he can explain what the difference is from that time on to date.
From my knowledge, the previous minister had approached cabinet and had obtained approval to create 14 new term positions to assist in the delivery of the Nunavut Housing Trust.
If there is no corporate history of what has happened over the last four years, then maybe we are in trouble because there should be some briefing notes or something.
Even though the former president is not around, there should be some documents, briefing notes, and I am sure Mr. Barriault must have gotten some type of a binder when he came in.
Of those 14 term positions, were any of them filled or was the money not allocated from cabinet to be able to fill them?
As with all GN positions, there have been some challenges in filling positions, but a number of these positions have been filled and some have since been vacated and then refilled. So it is an ongoing process.
Your time is up here.
Anybody else have any questions?
I’ll use discretion as Chairman, I’ll give you a little more time there, Elliott, but hopefully you won’t be another 10 minutes.
Thank you for allowing me to continue.
I just find that as I ask more questions, there are more answers that I want to know. Again, we’re talking about $110 million, of which we already found $60 million and now we’re going to find $50 more million.
I want to be able to go home and look my constituents in the face and be able to tell them, “Don’t worry. We won’t be over-committing anymore to these projects.”
It seems like when we come back and sit down and try to do business at the House, we’re being told that we need to find extra money in places where budgets are already stretched.
I know other ministers have said that they really can’t find any more money within their budgets and I don’t want to see programs suffer.
Of the 14 positions, you mentioned that some of them were filled and you also mentioned that they were terms. Mr. Curley has already mentioned that no more big sums of money are coming from places.
Are these term positions being cut and when is the term over for these?
The original terms will expire at the end of this fiscal year and we have extended some of them already.
And we will basically monitor what our staffing levels are in the districts and what the needs are.
If we follow what Mr. Curley had said about no more large sums of money would be needed and we don’t need to worry about ordering lots of more materials, why do we still need these positions?
What are we using to justify these positions if they were initially term? If we don’t have anymore burden on the human capacity level within the Nunavut Housing Corporation, why do we need these positions? What’s the justification?
Mr. Chairman, I just want the hon. member to quote my statements in the context of what I was saying.
I was talking about material shipment, whether or not we would have a large volume of material shipments and ordering materials because he was asking questions about procurement issues.
My response to that was that we don’t have large commitments now where we need to purchase a huge bulk of procurement materials to build units or houses.
We’re occupied right now in completing the units which the materials had been sent to communities.
In terms of these 14 positions or whatnot, who, in my view, are technical in nature, I’ll have Mr. Barriault respond to that.
As Minister Curley has noted for the 285 new affordable housing units, the material has been delivered and only a number of labour contracts have been issued to date. So construction will continue into 2011 and that’s why we would need the positions.
I read the Hansard, and sometimes I feel like a hamster in a running mill going round and round in terms of questions and whatnot.
I’m still trying to find clarification and some support for me to feel confident that there have been significant or sufficient changes with the Nunavut Housing Corporation to ensure that we’re not going to have any more over-contribution.
I know, when there was an announcement about the over-contribution, there was a bit of reorganization in terms of the structure of how the corporation works.
Could the minister or Mr. Barriault expand on what types of activities the corporation will undergo in terms of changes to the structure?
Is there going to be a board of directors established? I know the Deputy Minister of CGS is on some type of a committee to help bring things back on line. So if you could expand on that.
Mr. Chairman, I was reading the hon. member’s quote from CBC the other day that if we follow his line of thinking with that amount of money, we should have 286.
In a sense, he is saying that we should have 286 more units.
Really that would be over-committing more, particularly with the values of costs per unit that the corporation, the corporation of the day, and the minister of the day used for the Nunavut Housing Trust.
Really, if the figures were correct at that time, we should have been building a lot less than 200 units for the amount of money that the feds gave.
So I think he has an obligation to correct his statement to Nunavutmiut because that’s totally misleading.
In two instances, the Auditor General indicated that not only the capacity issues of the Nunavut Housing Corporation in terms of management should be addressed; I noted that the committee had not specifically ever quoted the Auditor General’s reference to governance issues that may have to be fixed.
So, in that view, I think we have quite an important signal from the Auditor General of Canada to an obligation as a government to ensure there are checks and balances established. We need to address that governance issue.
Cabinet has not finalized any plans in terms of the details yet.
That is something that I, as the minister, am committed to presenting them. There will be a number of options that will have to be debated.
As I said to the committee in one of my responses, status quo remains an option.
In terms of CGS having a management advisory role as a member of the executive committee, the deputy minister, yes, she is on that, but that is allowed within the current legislative mandate of the Housing Corporation.
Yes, that was one of the… . In terms of the government’s response to how it was handling the over-commitment, it was to have a bit of oversight by the deputy minister from CGS.
How valuable was her assistance and how many meetings did you actually have where she was involved?
Just to clarify, the intent of the ex officio capacity of the Deputy Minister of CGS was to allow for more formalized sharing of resources. This was not intended as an oversight position.