EdinburghNLP/nunavut-hansard-plusplus huggingface dataset:
On the last paragraph of page 5, can you tell me if you have a plan now that’s written down as to how you are determining that the HVAC system energy performance will be funded through energy savings?
Can you give me a little bit more tangible information on how that will happen?
That program is working pretty well in those areas that we have been working on it, but as for the details of that, if you may permit my deputy to get into the details of that, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Lausman.
I’ll just briefly answer that.
There are an awful lot of tests that are done prior to actually calculating the available energy savings versus the cost. It’s based on power metre readings. It’s based on balance testing for HVAC airflow.
It’s based on the efficiency of lights.
Right now, we’re doing a first run with our own building and we’re actually testing motion detectors for lighting to see how well that works.
We’re doing that to get it right before we fan it out to other buildings and that will help fine-tune costs calculated to actually do this work as well.
Chairman: Thank you, Ms. Lausman.
Since I don’t have any more names, we will be going right into the page-by-page of the main estimates.
We will now break for lunch and I would like to ask the members to be here exactly at 1:00 p.m. because we’re scheduled to conclude the session today at two o’clock.
So come back at one o’clock, please.
>>Committee recessed at 11:59 and resumed at 12:59
Just before the break, I stated that we will go right into the page-by-page.
Community and Government Services. Branch Summary. Directorate.
Total Operations and Maintenance, to be Voted. $9,123,000.
Chairman: We will go to J-5. Branch Summary.
Community and Government Services. Community Support.
Total Operations and Maintenance, to be Voted. $58,331,000.
At the recent Baffin mayors annual meeting, they were reported as stating that hamlets may soon receive block funding from the GN to make their own decisions about where to spend money on recreational needs, such as they did this year for rolling stock and other heavy equipment.
Does your department plan to set up a recreation block fund similar to the Mobile Equipment Block Funding Program?
We’re at the exploratory stage, Mr. Chairman. I’ll be working with the Minister responsible for Sport and Recreation.
We’re at the very infancy stage of that, Mr. Chairman.
The reason I’m asking is because we’ve had some concerns about the block funding for mobile equipment.
Obviously, we don’t think it’s enough there and I’m just wondering why you’re going the same direction here with the recreational needs.
Hon. Lorne Kusugak: Mr. Chairman, he referred to it as the rolling stock, which is the mobile equipment block funding. That is a very positive start and when you do the math, the funding for mobile equipment has actually increased compared to before when you look at the numbers.
In terms of taking a look at that for recreational funds, again, we’re at the infancy stage.
The questions that our colleague, Mr. Elliott, had in terms of the study that is currently being done in the municipalities will be of great help in determining if that’s the way we do want to go and what it will entail to find sufficient funds to meet the needs of recreation in the communities.
This $1.5 million, you’re trying to tell me that it’s an increase from what you have been giving.
So maybe the minister can tell me how much was spent on mobile equipment per year for the last 10 years, let’s say, and if there has been an increase. This year, apparently it’s $1.5 million.
If you could clarify how much it has been in the past.
Hon. Lorne Kusugak: Thank you for that question.
I think the ballpark figure would be roughly nine hundred thousand dollars annually that has been used towards that in previous years.
Mr. Schell: I guess what the minister… sorry, Mr. Chairman.
I guess what the minister is trying to tell me is that there has only been $900,000 a year for the last five or six years spent on any mobile equipment.
I find that figure awfully low for 24 communities.
We’re dealing with O&M estimates and I hear you’re revolving around capital.
I agree, it is low and it was low.
Unfortunately, that is the math and what we’re doing now.
Although it is not as high as we would like it to, it is definitely a positive start and it is significantly higher than previous practice, Mr. Chairman.
I guess what I was trying to get at is not the actual money for the capital but why they were planning on going to block funding. I don’t have any prepared questions now.
Minister Kusugak, did you want to respond?
It’s one of the things we’re looking at, Mr. Chairman. Hopefully, we will get more details as we explore it further, but it’s definitely trying to look at more consistent funding to deal with some of the recreational requirements of municipalities, Mr. Chairman.
On J-5, Grants and Contributions, $51,201,000, I assume that this is O&M for the entire capital infrastructure that you have.
It’s not really explained as to what exactly that amount is being used for.
My question is: when you build for a community, for example, a recreation complex, how do you determine how much O&M is going to be incurred by this municipality or do you have a pattern from previous years that you use uniformly throughout Nunavut communities?
The $51 million that he highlighted, Mr. Chairman, to answer that, that’s the contributions we give to the municipalities so the municipalities can operate, Mr. Chairman.
I understand that, but I’m just assuming that you have a formula where the Municipality of Pond Inlet, for example, will receive $1.6 million for general operating for water and sewage, etcetera, and the other part is for new initiatives like a new community hall.
Is it not a calculation within that $51 million? How do you determine what the cost is going to be with the new infrastructure project that is created in the community?
His prior question alluded to that. He is correct, there is a formula that is followed in determining what it will cost that will be included in the O&M of the infrastructure that was put into the community.
There’s a formula for figuring that out.
So NAM knows that a uniform or similar arrangement is made available depending on the infrastructure that is being built in the community and that NAM determines if this is fair to all communities, depending on the design and scope of the project that is being invested there. (interpretation) Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Our department determines the cost of operating the infrastructure that has been put into the community and then it is worked into the contribution agreement to the municipality, and they are made aware of that, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Arvaluk: My last question, Mr. Chairman, is: do you have to calculate on an annual basis as to what O&M is going to be for all of your municipal programs?
You already know what’s inside of the O&M, which we will be dealing with later on. The fuel prices and power costs fluctuate, and then sometimes there will be some over budget if normal practice is being done.
Do you have to calculate that every year to determine your O&M?
What would happen if some communities are over budget due to unforeseen increased costs of the O&M?
We work very well with the municipalities. The budgets for O&M for the municipalities in our agreements and contributions don’t change from year to year, unless there is new infrastructure or different circumstances that arise in the municipality.
If there are no changes in operating a municipality, then the O&M doesn’t change significantly, but if there is new infrastructure and such, then there would be changes to the O&M, Mr. Chairman.
My line of questioning is going to go back to what Mr. Schell was talking about with the $1.5 million for mobile equipment. Although, Mr. Chairman, you referred to that as capital, it is now under Community Support under Grants and Contributions, so I think it’s fair to ask these kinds of questions.
Mr. Chairman, it has been made obvious from complaints from our communities, even questions brought up in the House, that the $1.5 million for mobile equipment is not sufficient for communities.
Is the amount of $1.5 million in this budget the amount that the minister requested to have put in there or was there a different number?
We currently are funding it at $1.5 million. It is over sixty thousand dollars per municipality.
Currently, the levels that would be ideal for running the program would be $2.5 million in annual funding. We’re currently trying to work on reaching that goal.
You mentioned earlier that there was $900,000 per year when it used to be under the capital program issued in capital equipments for mobile equipment and I think it’s fairly obvious even years ago that it wasn’t sufficient.
Using my community as an example, we have a loader that is 20 years old. The main snow clearing equipment is 25 years old. We had a dozer that was 34 years before it was replaced.
So it’s obvious that there wasn’t enough money in the funds even years ago, which is probably why we’re getting so many complaints saying that $1.5 million is not even enough.
It has been noted by people in the House and questions in the House that more money was needed in this department. Again this year, there is no increase in the $1.5 million. At the same time, in my opening comments, there was a decrease in utility costs going to the communities by almost three million dollars.
Why didn’t his department consider moving some of this decrease over to the Mobile Equipment Fund to increase the $1.5 million?
It’s significantly different now from what was happening before. I concur with my colleague in terms of the lack of new heavy equipment or the old equipment in your community. I think that every member in this House can agree that the mobile equipment in communities is very old.
The department is having a hard time keeping up with trying to get new equipment and this is what the idea behind the block funding is.
Right now, the municipalities can go to the industry and work out financing arrangements with the people who are in the business of supplying mobile equipment to the municipalities.
Although this amount is low, I understand that there are municipalities that are working on getting into leases and purchases of mobile equipment.
As for the reduction of energy costs and utilities for the department, that was reduced because there was a decrease in the cost of those products. When there was a sharp increase a couple of years ago in the cost of fuel oil products, the department compensated the municipalities with that change. When the price went down, so did the funding for the utilities.
In fact, we didn’t claw back all of the money. We left some of that money with the municipalities, Mr. Chairman, and we just couldn’t switch it over to the Mobile Equipment Fund.
Under this fund, the $1.5 million, you said that communities get just over sixty thousand dollars each. I mentioned the age of the equipment in my community and the dozer, which was 35 years old, has been replaced under this program.
So there are no more funds for another five years in order to help replace the aged equipment that’s in the community. Right now, the loader, I know it’s twice a year that the engine gets rebuilt. The 814 snow removal equipment is annually getting the transmission rebuilt.
And I don’t know if this machinery can hang on for five more years.
I think the $1.5 million might be sufficient if everybody’s equipment was up to date and replacing it that way.
But where there’s so much equipment that is aged, I think that, at least for short-term purposes, there needs to be an increase in this budget.
Having said that, the money now for my community is tied up with this new dozer. It doesn’t leave the community any room to buy other equipment, such as pickup trucks, that the foremen or other people need in the community.
So I’m just trying to stress the fact that not only I feel that there’s not enough money in this fund, my community feels it and I’m getting the same thing from other communities.
So I guess it’s more of a comment.
I’m just stressing the fact that there’s not enough money in this fund.
I commend the Municipality of Sanikiluaq. I believe that they’re the first municipality to take advantage of the funding. The good thing about this funding is it’s guaranteed, it’s not a wish list issue, and it’s definitely going to that community.
The bright side of this, if there is one, is in the coming years, as they purchase new equipment, if we don’t change the current levels of funding, they eventually will have equipment that is up to date.
It will take longer than the municipalities want, but I can only agree that more funding for block funding, like any other department, would be the ideal way to go.
Like you said, the ideal funding for it is higher than it currently is.
I can’t disagree with that comment and I’ll leave it at that, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Rumbolt and Mr. Arvaluk asked a couple of the questions that I was going to ask.
I know the minister has received letters from me in the past about the Grise Fiord bulldozer as well.
I don’t know if I can add very much to what my colleagues have said other than the fact that it is a real concern that money is tied up for five years and that doesn’t leave the extra funds.
So I would like to urge his department to continue to increase that.
As you know and as you mentioned, prices are going up.
I wanted to ask some questions sort of similar to what Mr. Arvaluk was asking in terms of the transfers that go to the hamlets. It went from $54 million down to $51 million.
With talks of prices going up and whatnot, why did they decrease it by $3 million?
In fact, the reason for the decrease, as I mentioned earlier to a response, is we increased the municipal funding to alleviate the costs of increase in fuel and petroleum products in the communities.
We had to increase our contributions to the municipalities so that they can afford the costs of petroleum products’ increase in the municipality and the rates.
What we did, in fact, Mr. Chairman, is that we didn’t take back 100 percent of the contribution we gave them when the rates increased. In fact, we only took back 75 percent of the monies that we initially gave them.
Although it is significant, we did not take back the whole amount that we had given in the first place, Mr. Chairman.
What the minister is saying that… on J-5, in 2008-09, for the grants and contributions, there was $52 million and then it went, in 2009-2010, up to $54 million, and now in 2010-11, a couple of years later, it’s gone back down to $51 million.
He is saying it rose because of the cost of fuel and now it’s gone down lower than a couple of years ago because the rates of fuel are that much better.
Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Elliott. Minister Kusugak.
In 2009-2010, we gave them an additional $4 million in order to help compensate for the cost of the increase of running the municipality. Now we take back approximately three million dollars of the $4 million, Mr. Chairman.
I think I’ve got that and I think I understand that, so thank you for that explanation.
The second part of the question I was asking is if you look back in 2008-09, it was $52 million and now it’s actually a million less than what it was back in 2008-09. With inflation and everything like that, you would think that that increase would go up, not down. I was wondering why it has gone down.
Hon. Lorne Kusugak: There are other things included in that.
It wasn’t just that, there were other factors in terms of reductions in the funding to municipalities, such as three community maintenance agreements that we had, which have since been returned to the government.
There are other factors in that, Mr. Chairman, not just the issue with the costs of petroleum products.
We have municipal agreements for maintaining government infrastructure with the municipalities too.
Three of those have since ceased. So there are those and other factors, Mr. Chairman, included in the reduction of funding.
So I guess what you are saying is that our hamlets will have to make do with less.
I want to go back to block funding again. You had mentioned your department had sort of accessed that you would like to have $2.5 million in the block funding for the hamlets, which would be nice, a million dollars more than the $1.5 million that they’re allocating now.
Why was that decision made?
Was it your department’s decision to keep it at $1.5 instead of going to the $2.5, or was it cabinet’s or the FMB’s decision?
You know, I really hope we’re not having the municipalities be able to do with less, as your comment was.
The funding that we took back was not everything that we had initially given them, so I don’t know if that’s a fair comment to make.
In terms of the funding for mobile equipment, our department felt and still feels that $2.5 million is an ideal figure in order to be able to give municipalities enough funding to deal with their mobile equipment funding. It would work out to approximately one hundred thousand dollars per municipality, give or take.
Our department still feels that way.
I will continue to work with my colleagues at the Financial Management Board to work on dealing with the many issues that require funding from this government.
It’s just the way it is. It’s difficult to make decisions on where we can get that funding, which is priority one.
I’m glad we were able to get $1.5 and we will continue to work to see how we can improve the funds for this department for block funding.
I hope that the members on the Financial Management Board come to agree with you too.
If I’m listening to you correctly, they’re the ones who said that $1.5 million was sufficient.
I want to go back to my comments about the hamlet doing with less.
I need the minister to explain to me again because obviously I do not understand and I’m missing something. I guess if our airlines worked this way, it would be great too.
In 2008-09, the amount of money that was going to the hamlets was $52 million and then in 2010-11, we’re saying, “Here is $51 million.”
To me, in my teaching of math, that is less and that was what my comment meant by being less.
If I’m wrong, please explain to me how I do not understand it.
To me, $52 million is higher than $51 million, but I don’t claim to understand all of the intricacies of CGS because it’s a very complicated department.
You know, my colleagues know exactly how much the municipalities need for block funding.
It just becomes a very tough issue to try to find the limited resources we have to fund all of the programs that are needed throughout the government.
The block funding for municipal mobile equipment is one of the many priorities the government has and with a limited pot of money, we have to make some tough decisions.
I commend my colleagues for agreeing to fund the block funding to the levels it is at and I will continue to work with them to try to find funds to increase that amount.
I think in terms of his math, it’s really quite simple. I know the same math he does.
Again, we took less money than we gave them back in terms of funding for the cost of utilities in the municipalities.
My colleague also should include that we have community maintenance agreements where the municipalities operate our maintenance of government infrastructure in communities.
Over the last year, three of those agreements are no longer there and it’s in the ballpark of one million dollars for that, so it should be pretty close to the noted amount.
I wanted to ask some specific questions or detailed questions in regard to what Mr. Arvaluk was asking. Again, I want to really understand how this works. Your department kind of takes in other departments and does work for other departments, so sometimes I find it a little confusing.
Just so I understand in my mind what you were saying to Mr. Arvaluk in terms of increased transfers to the hamlets… .
Arctic Bay had the opening of its new community hall and the minister had the occasion to come up with some federal representatives to do the grand opening in the fall of last year.
For that community hall, there’s the increased fuel and electricity which the hamlet will be taking and incurring the costs for those.
Does that mean the Hamlet of Arctic Bay had an increase or a proportional increase because that building was given to them in terms of their hamlet transfer?
For that kind of detailed question, if I could have my deputy answer that question, Mr. Chairman, it might be easier.
That’s actually a very good question.
Annually, as capital projects get approved and cost calculations are made, we actually use a formula to determine and forecast what the costs of operating and maintaining those buildings are.
So that is a combination of utilities and maintenance over time, and then we forecast the need when that building will come online, when it will we opened, that those dollars are actually identified within the operation and maintenance main budgets, which we’re looking at now.
That’s usually the rate of changes to the budget.
One of the reasons why only 75 percent of the utility increase was taken back was in recognition that you are, in various communities, going to have additional infrastructure that is coming on stream and that 25 percent of previous funding was left there to take into account those added responsibilities for communities.
It’s rather complex and there are, as was mentioned earlier, plusses and minuses and changing in pricing as time goes on. So we certainly look to include a forecast for operations and maintenance in all of the new infrastructure that will be opening in communities.
I said that we talk a lot about lifelong learning, so every time I ask a question, I seem to learn a little bit more.
I don’t want to miss my opportunity to ask questions and these questions might seem like they are directed or should be directed to the Minister of Economic Development and Transportation when we are talking to him and when he comes before COW.
But again, because of the way CGS operates and because you guys have your hand in everything, I just wanted to make sure I didn’t miss my opportunity.
So if I do ask a question in the wrong place, I would hope that the minister would tell me.
The Arctic Bay Airport, right now, someone is paying for the fuel and someone is paying for the electricity.
Is that your department that is paying for that or is it ED&T that is paying for it?
I am glad that you learn a little about something every time you ask a question.
You must have learned a lot by now.
Mr. Chairman, it must be Friday.
I am sorry to say, but in terms of that airport, we don’t have our hands in that cookie jar.
Economic Development and Transportation would have that.
Thank you for allowing me to ask that question.
With the dinner that we had today of Chinese food, my fortune cookie actually said, “A good teacher is also a good student.”
I have always taught that way and always feel like that way. You are always teaching and you are always learning,
I guess my next question then would be again in regard to the Arctic Bay Airport since it is up in the air and whatnot. One of the rumours that is going around and one of the concerns I have is that there has been no negotiations with the Hamlet of Arctic Bay to take over the operation of the airport.
I’m assuming that if the airport is run by the hamlet, the hamlet will receive an increase in terms of positions, jobs, also fuel, the lights, and electricity for running that.
I wish I had taken that fortune cookie instead.
I thank you for the question, but again, Mr. Chairman, that question in terms of airport maintenance and operation is to do with ED&T, Mr. Chairman, and I wouldn’t be able nor in a position to answer that.
Like I said, I don’t want to ask the Minister of ED&T and have him tell me that I need to ask community government about it.
I heard my colleagues stating today that we are doing our operation in our hamlet with less money.
The trick of the trade that I learned over the years is to ensure that every equipment that you have in buildings are in an inventory so that you can get additional money for those things. If they are not recorded, they are not given any operational money.