Mr. Chairperson (Ben Sveinson): Good afternoon. Will the Committee of Supply please come to order. This afternoon this section of the Committee of Supply meeting in Room 255 will resume consideration of the Estimates for the Department of Government Services. As had been previously agreed, questioning for the department will follow in a global manner, with all line items to be passed once the questioning has been completed. The floor is now open for questions.

Mr. Jim Maloway (Elmwood): I wanted to continue with some questions regarding the Pan Am Games and the use of the computers that are eventually to go to Family Services. I want to know how you are dealing with the costing of the items. Is there a rental charge to the Pan Am Games? Who is responsible for installation and taking them apart and reinstalling them?

Hon. Frank Pitura (Minister of Government Services): I am advised that the computers for the Pan Am Games have been given to the Pan Am Games on a gratis basis for use during the Pan Am Games. The installation and configuration of the computers for use at the Pan Am Games is the sole responsibility of the Pan Am Games Society, after which they are to return the computers back to the provincial government, after which the provincial government will then have the responsibility of transitioning them into the Family Services department.

Mr. Maloway: So what guarantee do you have that the equipment is going to be returned exactly when you require it and are there any provisions for missing equipment or damaged equipment?

Mr. Pitura: I am advised that between the Pan Am Games Society and the provincial government there is an agreement that has been signed, and under that agreement the Manitoba government is listed as a co-insured and loss payable to the provincial government should anything happen to the computers by way of damage or theft.

Mr. Maloway: I am just wondering how the Pan Am Games will include the costs of the computers in their statements. I assume that your equipment will actually be depreciated equipment when you get it. How will it show as far as Pan Am Games are concerned as far as an expense? I mean, what we are going to be looking for at the end of the day is to find out how much money was made or lost in the Pan Am Games. That omelette will have to be unscrambled after the Pan Am Games are over, so I am trying to get an idea of what this number of computers would have cost the Pan Am Games had they had to go out and rent this system for those two weeks. How much money are you saving them by doing what you are doing?

Mr. Pitura: Mr. Chairperson, the Pan Am Games Society, of course, is responsible for keeping records of income and expenses for the Pan Am Games, and as part of their reporting, they would have to report all of their income and expenses for the Pan Am Games, but I guess the question in my mind would be is that if you are receiving something that has a zero cost attached to it, if you reported it as an expense item, then your books would not balance anymore. You would not be able to reconcile them, so it would be basically, I think, the responsibility of the Pan Am Games in terms of how they treat the computers that they have received for use during the Pan Am Games if indeed they cost it out as an opportunity cost or whatever.

Mr. Maloway: What you are doing, though, is you are taking 800 computers and you are buying them roughly four months earlier than you would have had to, had you just simply bought them for the Family Services, integrated them when their contract runs out, and put them on line. So you are buying them four months earlier, and four months down the line, as you know, the price of this equipment drops every three weeks, I think. Dell does a price reduction every three weeks, so there certainly are costs being absorbed here by the government in favour of providing this equipment to the Pan Am Games, so I am looking for the cost to the government in buying, taking possession of this equipment four months earlier than it has to. Second of all, I would like to know, what would this equipment, the 800 machines, cost the Pan Am Games Society had they had to go out and simply lease them for a two-week period.

Mr. Pitura: Mr. Chairperson, just in the brief discussion we had here, it would depend on the Department of Finance on how they wanted to approach it. If they wished to show a month or a month and a half or whatever, depreciation cost as part of the Pan Am Games funding arrangement. I am not aware but that is really a decision that the Department of Finance would make in terms of how it is shown on the books, as a cash cost or as a depreciated cost or as an opportunity cost for the Pan Am Games.

Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, since I cannot get answers from Finance, I am asking you to get me the answers from Finance, so you can use your good offices and get me the information a lot quicker than I can by calling them back into committee and starting over with them.

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Mr. Pitura: Mr. Chairperson, I just relate to the member that they may, indeed, have a value attached to the computers. I know that in other areas there has been some acknowledgement of being part of the Pan Am Games funding from the provincial government with regard to other services, and this may be not unlike any other service. But I am not even sure–and I would not want to commit myself to the honourable member, saying that we will be able to find this information for him because–well, it just may not be possible for us to glean that information in the time lines that the honourable member would like to see.

Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, the second part of the question was: what would it cost the Pan Am Games to rent or lease this number of computers for the two-week period or whatever the period is that they require them for? I am assuming that their equipment has to be set up and tested and worked through in advance of the games. So I know it is not a question of just taking them over there for a two-week period; it is more substantial than that, I am sure. I am sure they have them over there probably by now and that they will probably–well, they will not deliver them back to the government until I think you said October, so that will give them enough time to take them apart.

So what will that cost the Pan Am Games? You can answer the question by saying how much it costs you to buy these 800 units, what the cost to you would be. That would give me some idea. My suspicion though is that the Pan Am Games would have to buy the equipment at a higher cost than you would because you are buying 9,000-plus units, and second of all, they would not necessarily buy them because then they would have to resell them again. I would imagine that the cost to them would be a lot more, unless they could get–I think IBM probably is one of their sponsors, so unless they got sort of a sponsorship arrangement. I would like your comments on that.

Mr. Pitura: Mr. Chairperson, again, I think the honourable member is asking a question as to what the Pan Am Games Society would pay if they had rented or leased their equipment for this time period. Again, I say to the honourable member, it is an opportunity cost that you are asking the question as to whether the Pan Am Games Society will recognize it or not in terms of their reporting of income and expenses for the Pan Am Games. I am also advised that the period over which we loan the equipment to the Pan Am Games really will not affect the value of the equipment as far as the provincial government is concerned, and I am also advised that the computers are to be returned to the provincial government in September.

Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, I had asked some questions previously about the staff use of the Internet, and the minister will recall last year we talked about whether the government had a policy on the use of the Internet. At that time, you could not really provide me with one because I do not think there was a set policy. [interjection] The minister is indicating that he provided us with a policy. But nevertheless, now there is a policy with this new system and there is ability to track abuses of the system with the new computer system.

So I would like to know what the experience has been. I understand that you have not had any serious problems with it, but there is a policy that is in place right now, which I still do not have a copy of, but I would like to know just what your experience is with regard to the use of the Internet.

Mr. Pitura: Mr. Chairperson, I am advised since last we spoke in Estimates that, with the involvement of the desktop rollout and the establishment of the office of the chief information officer, the policy with regard to the utilization of the Internet is now couched in that office. I am advised that there is a policy, but in our particular area here with our responsibility, which is basically the hardware and the hardware management, that is a question that he might best ask of the CIO section.

Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask the minister how things are going with regard to the drive to reduce the amount of paper used in the government. I know that Finance could not answer these questions, but the long-term goal of the whole computer industry is to reduce the amount of paper that businesses use and governments use and people use, and the reality of course is somewhat different. I think most of us agree that we are probably chewing up, using up more paper today than we were before, in spite of computers. Nevertheless, it is the goal to end up with a paperless office, I guess.

That is in fact happening with some corporations such as I mentioned before, Dell, with their number now in the States, the people that make Cisco, I believe it is, make the routers. They have basically essentially turned themselves into companies without buildings, and the entire company is run just through connected computers on the Internet. They claim that there is no paper. I do not necessarily believe that. I think we ought to arrange a tour ourselves to see for ourselves. Just what is this new advance here that the government has made with this desktop program? What has it done in terms of the consumption of paper products in the government itself?

Mr. Pitura: Mr. Chairperson, I am advised that right at the present time we are just estimating that our paper use has probably not changed in terms of going downward, not dramatically. However, I think with the switchover in the desktop and setting up the office of the chief information officer that there are projects, I am advised that there is a project called ManDocs, which is under the CIO's office. This is a document management project still in the discussion stages. It is hoped to get it off the ground within the near future, but it has a potential to dramatically reduce the amount of paper that is used within the provincial government with regard to documents. I am also advised that the Desktop Management Unit, that Telecom Services is looking at things like alternate print solutions, which is just a different method of document transfer.

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We also have, through the Materials Distribution Agency, which at the present time is supplying the provincial government with its paper needs, we should be able to also monitor from that end with regard to the amount of paper used. Perhaps, as the member has pointed out, maybe indeed paper might not be reduced. But I think it is our hope that, certainly within the area of documents, we should be able to reduce the amount of paper. Of course the office of the chief information officer is the area where they are actually tackling this type of project head-on and attempting to get it off the ground.

Mr. Maloway: Well, at this point, then, how much are you spending on paper per year?

Mr. Pitura: Just very briefly, we talked about alternate print solutions. We are talking about a machine that is a combination of a copier, fax, and a laser printer all in one as a part of the alternate print solutions.

Perhaps while we are trying to see if we can find the numbers that the honourable member has asked for, my understanding is that the honourable member has also asked for the names of the people on the Land Value Appraisal Commission and their bios.

Mr. Maloway: Yes, what I am asking for and what was provided, for example, in the case of the Public Utilities Board, is that each of the board members have a biography, an 8.5 by 11 sheet of paper describing their qualifications for being on the board.

So I am making the assumption that that is what you have for the Land Value Appraisal Commission, that there is some sort of biography indicating when they were appointed and what their professional qualifications are.

Mr. Pitura: I do not have the complete bios that the honourable member is looking for as to where their place of birth is, how many children they have, where they went to school and where they obtained their degrees from. But I do have their names. I do have their addresses. I do have their year of appointment, and I do have what type of vocation they are involved in.

For example, Mr. Douglas Harvey is the chair of the Land Value Appraisal Commission. He was appointed in 1977 as chair. He is dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Manitoba, who now resides in La Salle.

Mr. Colin Campbell, who was appointed in 1988, he is a pharmacist in Balmoral, Manitoba.

Mr. George Sawatsky, appointed in 1988, he is a businessman from the Niverville area. He is manager of the Niverville Credit Union.

There is a Ms. Deanna Hobman who is the vice-chair. She was appointed in 1992. She is involved in real estate development. She resides in Winnipeg.

There is also a Ms. Stephanie Barnett, appointed in 1988. She is a realtor. She resides in Anola, Manitoba.

In 1999, there was a new appointment, Mr. Don Pfrimmer who is a farmer from the Roland area of Manitoba. Mr. Pfrimmer is actually retired from the farm now, as his son has taken over. He used to be a rural municipal councillor for many years. So he brings experience, at the request of Mr. Harvey, in the area of farmland evaluation and municipal assessment values on rural properties.

I am prepared to share this information with the member.

Mr. Maloway: So I am asking the minister then if he has the same type of list for any other boards and commissions under his jurisdiction and also for the bios for the managers of the SOAs.

Mr. Pitura: Mr. Chairperson, for the first stage, I will just share with the honourable member the other boards that I have responsibility for under the department and then we will move on to the SOA managers. First, the second board I have responsibility for within the Department of Government Services is the Manitoba Disaster Assistance Appeal Board, and this consists of the following members: John Blatz, from Steinbach, who is the chairperson, a local businessman; Richard Martel from Altona who is the vice-chairperson, who is also involved in business; Dawn McFarlane from Selkirk who is a member appointed by the now Association of Manitoba Municipalities; Lorraine Taylor from Birds Hill who is a member at large of the Appeal Board from Birds Hill; Mr. Larry Walker, of Miniota, who is also an appointment of the Association of Manitoba Municipalities. The Association of Manitoba Municipalities is required, I believe, if I am not mistaken, on an annual basis to reaffirm the appointments of their members to this board owing to the fact that there could be some changes over the year.

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The other board that I have the responsibility for is the board that looks at the operations of the SOAs and that consists of six people, I believe. First, there is a gentleman by the name of Norm Fiske, who is appointed from Winnipeg; a Ray West from Brandon. Both of those individuals are business people. There is Al Macatavish, who is vice-president of Manitoba Hydro, who is also a member; John Hosang, who is the Assistant Deputy Minister in Highways. The chair of the committee is the Deputy Minister of Government Services, and also the Assistant Deputy Minister of Supply and Services is a part of that committee, so that in fact is all of the boards that are under the responsibility of the Department of Government Services.

Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, I believe the minister was going to talk about the operating officers of the different SOAs as well.

Mr. Pitura: For the chief operating officers for the SOAs, first the Fleet Vehicles Agency, the chief operating officer is Dennis Ducharme, who is a long-time civil servant and was the administration officer for Fleet Vehicles prior to it becoming an SOA. For Materials Distribution Agency, the COO is Tracy Danowski, and her background is in marketing and market research. For the Land Management Services is Doug Parnell, who is a registered appraiser with the Appraisal Institute of Canada. Doug has had a long career in Manitoba Agricultural Credit Corporation before moving over to Land Management Services. In Mail Management is a gentleman by the name of Don Katz. Don's background is in the accounting area. Those are the COOs that we have in place.

I am also advised that Ms. Danowski, of the four COOs, lives in the St. Andrews area, and all of the rest of the COOs reside in Winnipeg.

Mr. Maloway: Could the minister provide me with biographies of all of the people that he has mentioned? He has just given us a thumbnail, but presumably there is an 8 1/2 x 11 biography of each of the board members that he has mentioned here on the record and the COOs. By way of explanation, as I have mentioned, the Public Utilities Board provided me with copies of the biographies of each of the board members. These things are available. You must have a very brief 8 1/2 x 11 sheet describing the qualifications of each of these people.

Mr. Pitura: Mr. Chairperson, I would advise the honourable member that we will certainly contact the people that we have talked about to see if they would be willing to share their biographies. The member is referring to an 8 1/2 x 11. I am sure he would be agreeable, too, if all of their biographies fit on an 8 1/2 x 11. That would probably be acceptable, I hope.

Mr. Maloway: I really do not care how long and detailed they are. I am just looking for something more than a one-sentence description of who they are and what they do.

Before we get back into dealing with the COOs and the SOAs, I would like to ask a few more questions about the IT area. I would like to get an update from the minister as to how he feels this contract with SHL has gone, what sorts of problems there have been that they have solved over the last year and a half, two years, and what sorts of problems remain unsolved with this new system.

Mr. Pitura: Mr. Chairperson, just to share with the honourable member, I think that when I first became minister in 1997, one of the first tasks facing me as minister was the letting of a contract for the desktop rollout for the provincial government. Of course, as time went on, I realized the enormous scope of the project and the extent to which we had to have a good relationship between whoever was the contractor and the provincial government in order to get the entire desktop rollout to happen and happen on time, with the right number of units and to get us transitioned into the managed environment.

I think it is safe to say that our relationship and the degree of co-operation that we have received throughout the desktop rollout process has been very good to excellent, and that is overall for the entire desktop rollout. Certainly, there have been times when probably things have not gone as well as they should have. However, I would point out that certainly the professionalism that our staff exhibited within the Desktop Management Unit and SHL has been very good, and the ability to solve any of the issues as we went along was always there because they had open lines of communication, and there was always forthright and open discussion about the issues that we were being faced with.

So, to sum it up, I would say that overall I am very pleased with the way the contract was handled, both by our staff and SHL. I think that if you want to have proof of the pudding, it lies out there in the fact that we have reached our target of the rollout of close to 7,600 desktop units and prepared to go on to the rollout for Family Services. Everything is working and working quite well. There are small glitches as we make the transition over. Even though we are out of scope here in the Legislative Building I enjoy the desktop rollout, and some of the things I see on my screen I have to kind of look at them in depth to find out what I am going to do next in the next step on that screen. But, overall, I think we had a very successful relationship as seen by the out-turns that we have had with regard to our ability to be in place transitioned in the desktop environment right now.

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Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, well, then could the minister tell me what sort of problems you are currently having with the system?

Mr. Pitura: Some of the areas that were identified from the standpoint of our Desktop Management Unit was in the area of answering a customer request quicker than we have in the past, i.e., better customer service. We are working at that. Of course, as the desktop rollout is taking place and we are now being transitioned into the management environment and we are also now in the process of using software application, identifying further training needs for staff that are using the applications, streamlining of the engineering aspect of the application software, improving the access for dialing into the system–of course, as everybody now is enjoying the new desktop and the software application and the interface on that, it is a case of just getting comfortable using it. Of course, everything I have mentioned so far is all part of that in terms of staff throughout government feeling very comfortable and at home in this new environment.

That is going to take a little while for that adjustment to take place, but I think that, if we accomplish some of the other stuff in terms of getting faster customer response times, in identifying the training needs, that will go a long way to raising the comfort level for people who are working within the environment.

Mr. Maloway: Have there been any problems with the new payroll software and other types of software that the government has introduced through its other initiatives on the system?

Mr. Pitura: That application, the SAP, is under the CIO's office. However, I would share with the honourable member that my paycheques have been coming out accurate, and I am sure that the honourable member's have too. I have not heard anybody complaining about getting the wrong paycheque or getting too much money on their paycheque.

Mr. Maloway: Well, I am sure they would not be complaining if it were too high. There is always a possibility that it would be too low. I recognize that this is Finance, but certainly these departments are intertwined. So the minister is saying he is not aware of any problems, then, with any of the major new software initiatives of the provincial government? I am just asking the minister to confirm that there are no major problems that he is aware of with the new budgeting programs and other software programs that the provincial government is implementing right now.

Mr. Pitura: I guess the only thing is that, when they went over to SAP, I understand that some of the first paycheques came out with duplicate stubs. As far as I know, I am not aware of any other problems that have occurred. I am advised that, within the Department of Government Services, in our Administration and Finance area, that we have had no problems with the new SAP.

Mr. Maloway: I am assuming that the minister is close to getting the cost of paper, the figure he was trying to get a few questions back.

Mr. Pitura: Well, I was advised by the deputy minister that we would have to provide that information to the member at a later time, because we do not have that information handy.

Mr. Maloway: I am not looking for that figure in isolation from the future projections or the past usage. I am not asking you to go through a whole lot of work here. If there are some studies on the use of paper in the government, presumably you have figures on what your paper consumption was five years ago or two or three years ago, what it is now, and what you are projecting it to do when you get onto this improved system. If you can project it to go down to zero, as Dell claims it does or Cisco claims it does, then I would like to know just when is it supposed to hit zero?

Mr. Pitura: The question the honourable member raises is an interesting question to have some discussion around. A lot of it depends on one's confidence in the system. I think that, talking earlier about having a document management project, if I write up a document and I send the document to the honourable member, and the honourable member wants to read it, but he does not particularly want to read it at his desk but at some other time in shade under a tree, that he may in fact say: well, I am going to print this off on paper, and then I am going to read it another time. So there are always those factors involved in terms of people who feel more comfortable having the word on paper rather than on a screen. I think as time goes on though and the electronic document management proves its worth and people get a higher level of comfort with it that indeed you may see a direct decrease in the amount of paper used as everybody has their confidence increased in the ability to trust the electronic medium. So to say that we are going to take a look at a dramatic decrease in paper usage within the provincial government might be too much of an aggressive type of an attitude to take toward the adoption of the new system. However, probably, over time, you will see this decline in the usage of paper.

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I would just throw one thing else out on the table for the honourable member, of course, the fact that within the province of Manitoba there is some investigation going on with the utilization of wheat straw and oat straw in the manufacture of paper. As the honourable member knows, the utilization of wheat straw and oat straw, of course, is a renewable resource on an annual basis. If there is a worthwhile industry there in terms of manufacturing paper, that industry in itself may want to market its product and actually want the provincial government to increase its use of paper, since it is a renewable resource. So there are going to be competing factions as we go down this road. Of course, as long as we are utilizing forestry products, there is certainly a push to reduce the amount of paper that we use, but if we start to utilize wheat-straw products–and my honourable colleagues for Portage and Gimli may indeed have a number of producers there that could well market what was considered to be a waste product into this industry, As a result, we could be using a resource that is renewable on an annual basis.

Mr. Maloway: I have no problem whatsoever with substitution of some of your paper products for wheat-straw products or any other kinds of products, papyrus if you want, provided the costs are low. But that is not really the question here. The question is that the whole computer age promised a paperless office. You people have been in government here for 11 years, and I would like to know just what efforts you are making to reduce the amount of paper, or is it typical of what I have heard in other industries where they pay lip service to reduction in the use of paper, but in reality the amount of paper usage increases every year rather than decreases? You juxtapose that reality with what is happening with other companies like Cisco and Dell where they claim to have a hundred percent paper-free company.

So the question is, you know, you cannot even tell me right now how much you are spending on paper, so you do not know how much you could possibly save if you do not know how much you are spending.

So let us say you are spending a million dollars in paper a year. I have no idea whether that is high, low, where it is. I am not asking you a question that I know the answer to already. I know we are not supposed to do that, but I am now. The question is if it is a million dollars worth of paper, then you do not have some author telling you in a digital economy book that you can achieve a paperless office by buying fancy new computers, you have companies like Cisco and Dell and probably others out there who claim to be doing it right now, today. So help me out here a bit. Just tell me, have you been to see Cisco lately or have you been to see Dell lately? Does anybody want to volunteer to, you know, phone them or go see them? What is going on here?

Mr. Pitura: The member has posed something that you could probably end up discussing for many hours. But, certainly now that we are at the point of having a desktop rollout in place and the SAP system in place, ultimately, with the establishment of the CIO office and the mandate that that office has–and of course part of that is to reduce the amount of paper that the provincial government would use. It is also to increase the efficiency that we have with regard to utilizing the electronic medium.

Right now it is possible for my deputy minister to communicate with every staff member in the Department of Government Services and the Emergency Management Organization with simply typing up a notice on his screen and hitting the return button, and everybody gets the message at the same time. So that in itself reduces the amount of paper.

But, you know, as we were talking about earlier, there is that transition time period where people have to get comfortable that what is on that electronic medium is actually going to stay there and be there when they want it. Once that level of comfort is there, they are going to be relying on the electronic medium to hold all the files that they require. Within the provincial government, too, as the member well knows, that we do have an archival system. So the whole area of archives up until the present time has been to keep everything hard copy or on microfiche. Now you watch the–what is it–Canada 2000 little short video clips on television, and they are talking and discussing the fact that a CD-ROM or a disk is not going to preserve file information for the long time. It is going to be the microfiche that is probably going to last the longest in terms of being able to preserve information on file. In fact, they even describe the utilization of the original paper that was used back in the 1600s and 1500s as being the paper that consistently will last the longest period of time. So as you try–[interjection] yes, as you try to enter a paperless environment, then there are also arguments to suggest that you do need some paper.

If you are going to have the history of Manitoba and everything that has happened in recorded time for the province of Manitoba on file, you are going to have to probably maybe take a look at a paper filing system to preserve that. So it is sort of a never-ending issue as to day-to-day commerce, communication within government, certainly, you probably want to reduce the amount of paper down to zero. But in terms of being able to put information away for the long term, that is still going to require probably a paper documentation to preserve it for the long term. So it is one of those areas where we are working towards, certainly, the reduction of paper as a result of the electronic medium.

One such example is that all of the departments that wish to requisition materials, whether it be from Materials Distribution, it could be with Fleet Vehicles I understand, and perhaps even nonmanagement services would have e-mail connect, departments of government would be able to communicate directly with them through the electronic medium. In terms of materials to requisition those materials, have those materials shipped and then have the payment of those materials be transferred electronically from department to department or from the department to the SOA for the payment of the goods received. So that is all very quickly moving into the electronic area which, in itself, reduces the amount of paper.

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The other area that we constantly take a look at is in the area of regulation and regulations with respect to the sales tax or regulations with respect to the Highways and Transportation or any number of departments. The ability for the customer who uses those services to do it electronically with the provincial government is certainly another area that is being looked at very seriously and pursued to be able to have that kind of customer government-type of linkage.

Since we have entered into the agreement on internal trade with most of our other sister provinces, we have adopted the MERX system which is the electronic tendering system, and that in itself has dramatically reduced the numbers of tender documents that we put out. Prior to MERX, anybody that was a potential supplier of the product, we would have to send them the tendered documents in case they were interested in filling them out and submitting them. Today, it is electronically filed on the MERX system. If a company looks at it and says that we have the ability to fill that contract, then they can request the tendered documents from the lister and be able to respond directly back to the tender proposal. So that, in itself, has eliminated a tremendous amount of paper that we would have to distribute in terms of tendered documents. Of course, being on the MERX system and being a part of the AIT, we are not just talking about Manitoba now, we are talking about nationally right across Canada. So not only does it save us paper, but it also saves us a tremendous amount of money in postage as well that we would have to use to send these documents to the rest of the provinces that might have some interest in responding to the tenders.

So it is a long, drawn-out and complicated process. You can just say, yes, we would like to reduce the amount of paper, and I think that very realistically we can reduce the amount of paper that is used in the provincial government in many areas, but at the same time, I think that they will stand on their argument that if we want to preserve information for the long term in the historical archives of this province, we are probably going to have to take a look at either a microfiche type of system or filing it on paper that is probably guaranteed to last 300 to 400 years.

Mr. Maloway: I know the minister is talking about stability of the media, and I guess that is a big issue. It is no point in putting all your information on eight-tracks if they are out of vogue and not available, or Beta tapes. So that is a problem with any storage system that you have, and the minister is correct, I believe. Papyrus and old-style books from 500 years ago are still around, but paper that is produced with the modern process is going to last a hundred years or less. People are finding that it is falling apart because of the chemicals that are added to it. So, certainly, that is a problem.

The point, I guess, is that the income tax department requires you to keep your records for, I believe, six years maximum. A lot of the activities of the government do not require lifelong records, so I do not know that you are ever going to have the proper answer if you simply sit around waiting for it. I guess the type of answer I am looking for is that similar to when we dealt with Fleet Vehicles under the minister's former colleague, the greatly missed ex-member from Portage la Prairie. We asked him whether he would look at Fleet Vehicles adopting some alternative fuelled vehicles, and his line was, no, we are a very slow-moving government here. We do not act; we simply react. When the cost of these vehicles gets one cent lower than gas-producing vehicles, then we will look at them. But in the meantime, we are going to buy simply the cheapest vehicles we can, and we are not going to look ahead and be proactive here and look at something that might reduce pollution and so on. He was not interested in it at all.

So it seems to me that the answer that I am sort of looking for is that we will have somebody check into Dell and Cisco and other companies out there to just try to get ahead of the game here and see whether there is a possibility for significant cost savings in the use of paper, or anything else, for that matter. If somebody is doing it better somewhere else, then you should be willing to take a look at it.

The minister is also aware that if you were to install your media on a certain type of disk, the industry always seems to be able to make it possible to retrieve it and put it on a new type of disk. For example, if you have your material on a VHS tape, the methods are there to transfer it to a digital tape or to a Beta tape. You can do that, and there may be a cost factor associated with that as well. I mean, no system is going to last forever, as the minister agrees. Even books are not going to last more than 300 or 400 years, and it depends on how they are taken care of. We do not have 300 or 400 years, he and I, to worry about this problem. All I am asking him right now is: are there immediate gains that could be made by looking at what some other companies are doing right now to see how you could possibly reduce the cost of the government buying paper and save the taxpayer some money in the process and make a much more efficient system along the way? I would like the minister to make some sort of commitment here as to how he sees that he could move on this.

Mr. Pitura: I think as I indicated to the honourable member earlier, the fact that we are in the process of trying to improve our efficiency by reducing the amount of paper we use, thereby reducing the cost to the taxpayer. I think as the honourable member appreciates, we are still maintaining our status here in Manitoba as the lowest cost government per taxpayer across this country, and we continue to pursue even lower costs to taxpayers and still maintaining a high level of service. But, yes, we are looking at areas such as the document management project which I talked about earlier. As a good deal of information is shared within departments of government and between departments of government in terms of a hard copy document. Being able to share these documents electronically is certainly going to reduce the amount of paper.

So, yes, we are committed to certainly trying to find ways of reducing taxpayer costs vis-a-vis the using of electronic medium to reduce the amount of paper, and we are committed to keep looking at that area. We will endeavour to do anything we can to reduce the amount of paper that we use in the provincial government.

Mr. Maloway: I did want to ask a couple more questions in this area. One of them had to do with servers. What has happened in that area is the department bought more of these things. I do not know how many you have right now and how well they are working or where you actually bought them all. You are probably aware that there are competing ideas out there as to how you should approach this server business. For example, I think it is Microsoft and its trading partners buy the idea that you should buy a whole bunch of the government–for example, the government of Manitoba would buy itself half a dozen little servers and run the government that way, so the government would have half a dozen servers. But there are other companies out there that argue that is not the way to go, that the proper way to go is to have one big server dealing with the whole government, and that is going to be the trend in the future with the development of technology that in a number of years, well, maybe not in a number of years but within a couple of years that you will not have to use–they liken the argument to the telephones.

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With the telephones you have a little dumb terminal in your house, and all the software is down the street at the big phone company office. So the computer business has that argument raging within it where companies say it does not make sense. It is good for Bill Gates that everybody has Windows operating system on their computer, but in reality that is obsolete thinking. That is not where the future lies. The future lies with people getting away from buying all these tons of software which by the way never works anyway. If you have ever bought any software, you know it will work for a while but then things happen. I think a lot of people may opt for a solution whereby they do not have to buy a $2,000 computer, another $2,000 worth of software that never really works all that well anyway and will opt in the future for basically a dumb terminal in their house, much like a telephone today, with all the software down in a central server, central office.

That is the argument, and I would just like to know what your comments are about that as to whether–you have obviously committed yourself for this phase of the operation with Bill Gates and Microsoft and those guys. The question is: what are your observations and your knowledge of the other solution, and what do you think the possibilities are for eventually switching to that method?

Mr. Pitura: The member puts forth an interesting observation. I guess there is no black-and-white answer. It is not a black-and-white area that one can look at and say, well, yes, one should go to a large single server with the software enclosed in that server and everybody use that.

Just for the member's information, the servers that are associated with the Desktop Management Unit are the file and print servers, but the argument for a large single server, I am told, would really have to be done on a business-case basis because, if you are using one single large server, and with the way the province is set up in terms of geographical distribution of all of our offices, you would need to have a very high-speed, low-cost communication set-up.

In other words, if you are going to be using a single server, you have to have the ability to move information fast; otherwise you lose a tremendous amount of the efficiency having one large file server as opposed to many small ones. There is also the factor that one server, if you are utilizing one server, when that server goes down, government shuts down, whereas using a multitude of smaller servers, it just means that that particular area is affected and it can be isolated and brought back on stream and everybody else is still on. It is kind of a risk analysis that you have to do as to whether you are indeed the downside risk as opposed to the upside risk on putting in a larger server, is going to give you a much better chance on the upside than it is on the downside.

Certainly, on the downside part of going to a larger server is going to require the high-speed, low-cost type of communication, which in the large part we do not have at this point in time. Perhaps, when we get to the point where we can have our communication via satellite, then we could have high-speed, but right now it is a cabling system, and as such it is a very high capital cost investment to obtain that high-speed transmission.

Mr. Maloway: How many servers did you buy, and what company did you buy them from? Are they all from the same company, or are they different?

Mr. Pitura: The honourable member asked how many servers are part of the desktop system in government. I am advised that there are 150 Hewlett-Packard servers across government. The honourable member has this look of astonishment on his face. I am not sure if we have the costs or not available. We probably can get that information for the member, but the honourable member looked a little bit surprised at the number of servers, but you have to also remember that geographically in this province we are spread out with all our provincial office buildings in a number of communities throughout the rural areas in the North.

I am also advised that the Hewlett-Packard servers are owned by EDS, and they are responsible for the servers themselves. In fact I am not sure, but I believe the honourable member and I went on a little tour of the central control area where they showed you that they can monitor the servers across the government and be able to attend to a server before it actually went down on the basis of the monitoring system that they had. They do own the servers, and this is all part of the managed environment that they have on contract with the provincial government.

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Mr. Maloway: Was any cost comparison done originally as between the idea of having one big server versus these 150 little ones?

Mr. Pitura: I am advised that when we went to tender on the entire project, we did not specify the number of servers. What we asked for was a network service being supplied to the provincial government. Whether or not they looked at larger servers or the number of servers within the provincial government, that was really a part of the people who were establishing the network for us to utilize. I am sure that they must have had some rationale for making the choices that they did with regard to the number of servers.

The member was asking for the cost of servers, and I am advised that that cost is part of our per seat fee and part of that of buying the network service, so it is all part of that per seat fee.

Mr. Maloway: Did anybody quote of the six, I think it was. Was it six companies? I am not sure how many there were. But, quote on the contract, did anybody quote the single-server concept, or was that precluded by the specifications, specifying that it be a multiserver approach?

Mr. Pitura: I am advised that all the proposals that were brought in response to the tender call were multiserver proposals. None of them were single server.

Mr. Maloway: The software licences that you have with Microsoft, I guess, that is who they are with, are they to run out at the same time that the contract does with SHL?

Mr. Pitura: Our understanding is that we think they are to terminate at the same time, but we will have to validate that information. We are prepared to do that and bring that information back for the member.

Mr. Maloway: Because at the point at which the contract runs out, in a couple of years from now, if the software licences run out about the same time, then that would probably be the appropriate time to relook at the whole area again, because my understanding is that technology is developing in such a way that maybe two years ago you would have come up with the multiserver conclusion, but today it may look different. There are companies that do their worldwide operations on a single server, and where they save is not only on the hardware, but they also save not having to buy, in your case, probably hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of licences. You probably have one licence for every machine, I would think, and that is quite complicated.

The other point that you would look at here, and I know you gave some compelling reasons for why you would go with multiservers, because if one breaks down, you have 149 left, but one of the other big cost factors, I am told, with the multiserver approach and by having all these Microsoft programs on each of 9,000 machines, I guess, by the time you get finished, is that every time you have to do an upgrade, you have to do the upgrade on each and every individual machine. Now, I do not know whether that is true or not, but I assume that is the case. Whereas with the single-server concept, when you have a change in software, any change, and you know the changes keep coming through, you just simply put the change on your big server and it is done. You do not have to worry about did somebody forget to do it in Family Services or did somebody else forget to do it in Justice. You do not have to rely on that. You simply make the single change and it is done, and that is supposedly a fairly considerable cost item for you and your multiple-server approach.

Anyway, I will let you answer some of those questions.

Mr. Pitura: I am advised that even now, whether or not there is a large number of servers or not, that a large portion of the upgrades that we get now can now be done centrally from the Winnipeg operations. So there is that ability to change centrally through the network right now. So I do not think it is directly related to the number of servers necessarily, but it is the way the network is set up.

Mr. Maloway: Last year I asked the minister some questions about fire walls, and I think he told me there were half a dozen. Each caucus was fire-walled, I believe.

An Honourable Member: Not yours.

Mr. Maloway: Not the NDP caucus, no. That is why you always know what we are doing. But, anyway, I would like to know what is happening with the fire walls that were set up, and have there been any occasions where hackers have broken in through any of the fire walls that you are aware of? I would just like to know what the current system is.

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Mr. Pitura: Mr. Chairperson, I would just like to share with the honourable member some of the security privacy initiatives that are presently in place or to be in place within the security environment.

First off, I would share that Systemhouse is obligated to implement the security controls listed in the Manitoba Desktop Initiative Security Guide. Systemhouse is bound to follow all other Manitoba security policy and guidelines documents. Proactive processes such as real-time virus protection have been established. A minimum security standard has been established for all departments. Optionally, departments may upgrade to higher levels of security if they so choose. The technical architecture sets the framework for Manitoba's network design and is designed to prevent unauthorized access to data. Fire walls have been deployed to provide enhanced security.

Here I might just share with the member that the caucuses within the Legislative Assembly are under the auspices of LBIS. Therefore, they are out of scope for the Desktop Management Unit, so they are unto themselves.

The use of data encryption is being implemented, and if there is over-the-shoulder support services provided by Systemhouse, they require the user's authorization to do so. Users are restricted to viewing and accessing data that falls within the scope of their work requirements. All unauthorized access attempts will be monitored, and procedures are in place for establishing user ID in setting of passwords. Users are required to follow stringent security procedures, example, password-protect their personal computers.

Lastly, it is the longer-term goal of the province to establish an information protection centre responsible for ensuring the ongoing security of the information technology infrastructure within the provincial government.

To date, I am advised that we are not aware of anybody, as the member put it, hackers and whatnot, getting access to the information.

Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, does anybody have basically a key to the entire system? Usually in systems, there is always one the systems manager, I think they call them, has on any network. While individuals may have a level of security that they can go through to get certain information, there is always somebody centrally at the top that is managing the whole network who has access to all of the data. Is that the case here or is it not?

Mr. Pitura: Mr. Chairperson, I am advised that there is not one keyholder for the entire system. There are rights granted to individual units for access in certain areas, but nobody is granted access to the entire area.

Mr. Maloway: So nobody in the government or in SHL has access to the entire system. Is that what the minister is telling me? Not one single person?

Mr. Pitura: I am advised not one person or organization.

Mr. Maloway: Is it possible that the fire wall could be violated, and the system could be accessed by a hacker and you would not know about it at this point in time–at any time since the system has been set up?

Mr. Pitura: As I indicated to the member earlier, we are not aware of anybody that has been able to penetrate the system. I am also advised that, under the way the protection system is in place, it would be highly unlikely that that would occur. The member mentioned earlier about fire walls. Of course, if you know where the fire walls are, then you know how to get around them and through them. So the idea of having fire walls for security purposes is not to tell anybody where the fire walls are.

Mr. Maloway: I would like to believe that the fire walls are totally secure and that no one can break into a system, but, as sophisticated as some systems are, hackers have broken into systems such as the Central Intelligence Agency in the United States and they changed, I guess it is the screensaver or the introductory page from Central Intelligence Agency to Central Stupidity Agency. That was done in the last year, and hackers make a game of going after banking institutions and CIA and other institutions, NORAD, and other high security places. I cannot believe that the Manitoba government would be able to fortify their system as well as the American military would or should. That is why I asked the question. How sophisticated is your fire wall system? How sophisticated is your system that some young or old hacker could not break into it and get in there undetected and be roaming around without you knowing about it? What guarantees do you have that you cannot be broken into?

Mr. Pitura: I probably mentioned it earlier, the mandate of the office of the CIO has the responsibility for security, such I indicated earlier, that they are setting up an internal protection service to ensure the security within the provincial government. Certainly I would not sit here and say to the honourable member that there would be absolutely no way, no way will anybody penetrate the system, because as soon as you say that, you are probably going to have your first hacker break in. What we intend to do is to try to put in all the necessary safeguards that would make it very difficult for an individual to break into the system and wander around within it freely.

I guess that one of the things I am advised here is that we have one of the top security experts in Canada, Mr. Robert Garigue working for us, and he is the advisor to the CIO, but having said that, you can be topnotch in the world probably, and, as the member said, the Central Intelligence Agency in the United States got broken into by a hacker.

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What it needs, I think, is dedication to making sure that the security procedures are in place and followed and that any time that you can change your methodology for security, and this goes without saying, that with anything that you want to keep highly secure, the more you change, the less likely it is that somebody is going to know how to break in. But with the member talking about the CIA in the United States, sometimes I wonder whether maybe they do want their information shared, so that it does get out, so that they can have that shared out in the public domain.

So there may be method to their madness in this, but we are dedicated here in Manitoba to ensure that the security is kept at a high level, and we are going to do everything we can under the legislation that we passed in the last couple of years–the privacy of information bill that was passed and then all of the security checks that we have within our information technology system–to assure Manitobans that the information that they have in that system is going to be secure.

Mr. Maloway: Well, how would you know if a hacker did break in? Say the NDP caucus is fire-walled, you have a fire wall there. How would we know someone has broken in there if they were simply looking at information and they did not change any information? How would we know they were even there?

Presumably when hackers break in, they do things. They go and put viruses in there and little bombs in there and all sorts of other little things, but what if they just simply go in and look around at the information and do not change anything? Is there a way of getting through the fire wall, getting inside and taking a look around and leaving without leaving a trail, or would the trail be picked up by the detection system?

Mr. Pitura: I am advised that if there was an attempt by a hacker to get into the Manitoba Government Services database, there is a check system in place right now that would put an alert on with respect to somebody trying to break in. I think the member knows as well that there is that possibility for somebody who is very good at what they do, and they will not leave any trail. [interjection] There is always the possibility, but it takes a little bit of luck probably along with it. You can put in as high a level of security as you possibly can, and that is what we are doing within the purview of the desktop management area to ensure that high level of security is there. We cannot do anything else but to say that we are doing our utmost to ensure that that security is in place, that security is working. We will keep people out who want to break in, but we will not absolutely guarantee that nobody will get in. I do not think you can give that guarantee, but we are going to do our best to keep them out.

Mr. Maloway: So it is possible that we have a hacker who could go into our system, view the data at will, and then get back out of the system undetected?

Mr. Pitura: I am advised that you not only have the level of security in this system but the data itself is encrypted. I am advised that if one were to get through the level of security into the data, that having the data encrypted makes it virtually impossible for the retrieval of that data by whoever has got past the line of security. At the same time, you see there is time, date encryption on the data. It is highly important sensitive stuff that is encrypted, so that makes it doubly or maybe even triply difficult for anybody to get in and look at the data and then get out.

They may indeed be able to. Chances are very unlikely, very remote, but if somebody were to get in and get out, they probably would not be able to look at the data in a readable form.

Mr. Maloway: The minister the other day referred to Melissa the virus and the question is: how does a virus like that get into your system then if you have virus detection software? You said it does not come from within. You have said no government employee could introduce it into their machine. That was the answer I got the other day, so it has to come from without. The question is: where did this Melissa virus come from? If your system is so sophisticated, presumably you could track down where it came from. If it is so sophisticated, how did it get in there in the first place, I guess? You would think it would be stopped at the door, and that did not happen.

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Mr. Pitura: I have to point out for the honourable member that when you took a look at the Melissa virus, that within the provincial government, because of the way we have our system set up, in three hours time Melissa virus was under control in every computer within the provincial government.

If you go to the government of B.C., with their network they spent 10,000 man-hours battling Melissa within their computer system. That is the difference between, I think, a system that is–it gives you sort of the extreme ends as to what could happen. I was fairly satisfied that our system is set up to be able to combat that type of a virus, but if the entire system is set up on an e-mail system, anybody I send an e-mail to or anybody from the outside can send an e-mail into a government computer, work station. That is how Melissa came, on e-mail, from someone else as an attachment. When you hit the attachment, that is when everything broke lose.

I am led to understand that the Melissa virus could come on an e-mail from anybody. They did not know they were sending an attachment, which was the Melissa virus. But that is how the e-mail came. How they picked it up, I have no idea, but our ability to respond to it and to get it under control quickly I think has a lot to say about the way the Desktop Management Unit and the way we are set up in this system within the provincial government.

Mr. Maloway: Well, that was the question. I know the minister did give this answer before, that he had it under control, had the fire under control in three hours and stamped it out. That was not my question. My question was: how did it get there in the first place? Were you able to track it back to a guilty party somewhere along the way? Who was the guilty party, where were they, and what did you do about taking action against them?

Mr. Pitura: I am advised that if the honourable member is willing to wait awhile, the Desktop Management Unit will take a look at and find out if they can determine where the virus was introduced into the government computers. I anticipate that that is the question the honourable member was asking. He was not asking where Melissa originated from in the first place.

But I am advised that it is probably possible to be able to locate at what point it entered the government system, at what computer unit. If the honourable member is willing to wait for that information, we can probably find that out and get back to the honourable member as to how and at what point of entry it was.

Mr. Maloway: I would be interested in knowing how it got in. I know that the minister's information about how his system worked far better than B.C.'s, I mean, that sounds pretty good. The question was: how did it get in there in the first place? The fact that it was detected and gotten rid of in such a short time is probably a credit to the system.

Anyway, what I want to ask the minister about now is back to the question about e-commerce. The other day he talked about the possibility of moving forward in the next months and years providing government services through home-based computers or through kiosks in shopping centres and so on. I asked at the time about the e-commerce studies that have been done by the Gartner Group, by Hackett Benchmarking and the Geiger Group.

We talked the other day, too, about his discussions with the people in Finance about this whole e-commerce area. I wondered if he had been able to obtain copies of these studies for me and whether he could elaborate a little bit further as to what is happening as far as pilot projects are concerned with any of these areas for e-commerce with the public.

Mr. Pitura: I am advised that the studies that we talked about the other day done by the Gartner Group were basically studies that were not specific to Manitoba conditions necessarily but to a more global situation with the utilization of e-commerce. I have not got any of those studies available for the honourable member, but we will attempt to see if we can find some laying around, and, if so, we will forward them to the member.

I have to, though, keep reminding my honourable friend here that a lot of this area is really under the chief information officer, the Office of Information Technology within the government. [interjection] Well, it is just a fact that we are the hardware guys. We are the hardware people, and those are basically the program people. They are the ones who are taking a look at security, taking a look at the various e-commerce programs. We talked about the document management project. That is all under the purview of that office, and it makes logical sense that it should be there as well.

Mr. Maloway: I wanted to ask a few questions about security here at the Legislative Building. I know the minister may want to get some different staff for these questions [interjection] Security at the Legislative Building, yes. No, we will leave computers for awhile and move on to some other areas here.

The reference was made in an article a couple of weeks ago about the card system at the Legislative Building not being Y2K compatible and there was a new system being set up. I would like to know what has happened with that, whether that has now been completed and what the effect is.

Mr. Pitura: I am advised that all the receiving stations which receive your card at the door have all been upgraded to Y2K and the central system that receives all the information and panels all the information has now been upgraded and is Y2K compliant. So the entire security system in the building is now Y2K compliant.

Mr. Maloway: A few minutes ago when the member for The Maples (Mr. Kowalski) was here, he asked the question about security in the building. He said to me privately: why is there such security at the front doors of the Legislative Building when for the last two weeks the back doors are totally open? Is that the case? If so, why would that be the case?

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Mr. Pitura: Basically, when the system was put in, it had some start-up difficulties getting everything to operate properly. So, from time to time, the doors were open, but at the same time when that happened, security was also present in terms of having people on the floor checking those entrances. I think that is not unusual for any system that is just being put into place.

The member was talking about a door that was open. I would have to share a story that I had with the honourable member where I could not get the door to open, and it would not read my card. I was advised that it was just a case of the alignment in the reader, that it could be fixed very quickly and then it would be able to read the card. So these little things, adjustments have to be made, and I think the honourable member can appreciate that you just do not install something that is just as sophisticated and have it work it 100 percent in the first hour of operation. Sometimes you are lucky and it happens, but in other cases, not always, but you work at it, you get it working properly. I am sure once everything is in place and working well, it will probably give you better service over the long term than anything else you have had before that.

Mr. Maloway: Any report references, bomb threats, threats and other incidents and so on, I would like to ask the minister, has there been an increase? This annual report is for 1997-98, so it is a bit out of date now. The number of bomb threats were listed as seven one year, then nine the next year. I am just wondering what the current records are for bomb threats, and also if the minister would basically tell us what sort. Are these simply phoned in bomb threats? Is that how they occur? What is the procedure when these threats are phoned in?

My guess is that the building would have to be evacuated when a bomb threat is made. I do not recall that ever happening. I think we had some sort of a dress rehearsal for something here, a couple years ago, the minister might recall. That may be before his time, I am not sure. I do recall having to go outside a couple of times here for some sort of a dress rehearsal, but I do not think it was an actual bomb threat. I am reading here that there were seven one year, there were nine another year, and there may be some more since then. I do not think anybody in the building is aware of any bomb threats being communicated.

Mr. Pitura: Mr. Chairperson, I neglected to introduce the gentleman at the end of the table who has just joined us, but I will introduce him now, and that is assistant deputy minister of Property Management, Hugh Swan. He is advising me that with regard to bomb threats, for some reason or another, the number this year is down as compared to previous years, but we will endeavour to get a hard number for the member to share with him. Basically we do not have the hard number with us, but his recollection is that it is down as compared to other years.

But I guess maybe just add for the honourable member that I know that when you read the annual report and you take a look at the number of bomb threats that are there, you are probably never advised of any of them. There is a good reason for that.

An Honourable Member: Oh, I am sure.

Mr. Pitura: No, there is a very valid reason for that. On a serious note, the evacuation procedure that the member was talking about is certainly one that we tend to reinforce and to make sure that everybody knows exactly what has to happen with respect to an evacuation. But if you take a look at the configuration of the building that is here, one of the safest places to be is probably in your office, in terms of the structural integrity of the building.

An Honourable Member: Depends on where the bomb is.

Mr. Pitura: Well, certainly that depends where the bomb is, but certainly if there is a bomb threat, the investigation takes place and the sweep is made of the building. If the threat is real, action will be taken, but I think as the member reads in the annual report that those were threats and only threats as far as the bombs, the actual bombs, found was basically they turned out to be threats and not actual bombs.

The structural integrity of the building is such that the outside perimeter is the most strongly supported section of the building, so if there was a bomb placed in a public area, the safety would be in the offices, surrounding the perimeter of the building.

Mr. Maloway: But over a two-year period, 24-month period, we had 16 bomb threats, and the question is: why were there no circumstances where the building was evacuated? Were these bomb threats all in the evening when there is nobody here? I do not recall one time when, because of a bomb threat, the building was evacuated, and I would have guessed that is what one would do is if the caller indicates that there is a bomb in the building, the first thing you would do is get people out, and then you would look for the bomb. I do not think the minister is suggesting that somehow they look around to see if there is a bomb there first, and if they find one, then they evacuate the building. Right?

Mr. Pitura: When a bomb threat is received, of course, we do have very highly skilled security people who manage the security for the building. As well, we always have as a support service, certainly the Winnipeg Police Service is there to help us out as well

But each and every bomb threat, there is a risk assessment attached to it. Sometimes by virtue of the caller being identified with previous occasions, or whatever, it is deemed to be very low risk. If there is a high risk attached to it, the staff know how to do a sweep of the building very quickly to determine if the threat is real or not.

As well, I am advised that certainly if every time somebody made a phone call here and said there was a bomb threat–it could even be to your office, whatever, just to leave the message–we cleared the building, then there would be quite a few people who would probably have a lot of fun with that to see how many times we cleared the building in a day.

So, certainly, there is that aspect of it. There is also the safety aspect of the people involved, and this is part of that risk assessment, and, certainly, if a bomb threat was real and put people's lives at risk, then an evacuation procedure is followed. The honourable member might recall the time when there was a van parked near the front steps of the Legislature. In fact, I think it was parked on the front steps of the Legislature, and there was a risk that there could have been a bomb associated with the vehicle. I believe with that particular situation, there was a limited evacuation of the front of the building. There was a limited evacuation of that part of the building because of where the van was located.

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So each time there is this sort of threat, as I said, the risk analysis is done and the best possible action is taken. As I mentioned earlier, if we are talking about safety of the staff who work in this building, the first place for their protection is really to stay in their offices until they are advised otherwise. Therefore it is important, as well, that you do not go running around the building every time you get a bomb threat and tell everybody there is a bomb threat, because then there are a lot of people who are going to panic under that type of situation. So if there is something happening, you want to be able to get people to calmly follow an evacuation procedure that is laid out, depending on which section of the building is under threat.

So it is a well-thought-out process. The first time that the Assistant Deputy Minister Mr. Swan shared it with me, and Mr. Hines, the head of security, I was quite impressed with the way that the whole procedure is put into place and operated.

Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, then why is it the case that when we are dealing with airlines, that every time there is any kind of a bomb threat made, they evacuate the plane? They rarely find a bomb, but they take everybody off the plane. What is the difference here? You get 16 bomb threats in 24 months, and somehow this is treated differently than if you were an airline. Why?

Mr. Pitura: Well, I could answer this a number of ways to the honourable member. First off, you do not usually evacuate an airline in midflight when you have a bomb threat on board. You get the plane down on the ground as quickly as possible. Having said that, though, in the case of an airline, the space is much more confined than it is in this Legislative Building, so therefore for passenger safety they evacuate the airplane. Now, we are talking about taking 90 passengers off the plane and putting them on the tarmac somewhere in safety. When it is the Legislative Building, if we were to totally evacuate the staff every time we received a phone call with a bomb threat, there would be people who would probably not choose to work here because of the hassle in their lives. You also have to remember that the bomb threats often are not real.

Security staff knows how to do the sweep. The Winnipeg Police Service has a professional bomb squad that is at their disposal to be used. Once that is done and they are satisfied that there is no bomb, everything goes on as usual. There is an action plan in place should the sweep reveal a bomb, which part of the building it may be a threat to, or, in fact, it may be the entire building. So all those contingency plans are put into place. But there is no point in unduly upsetting a lot of people who work in this building on a day-to-day basis each and every time a bomb threat is received in one of the offices.

Mr. Maloway: I think there is a bit of an inconsistency here because at the airport you have a lot of security provisions which you do not have here. Just to get on the plane you have to go through different levels of security. You have to have your bags looked at. You have to have your pockets emptied out, much the same as you do to attend the Manitoba courthouse right now.

A couple weeks ago, I had occasion to go over there to look for some court documents in a legal case, and there is an airport-type security system there where no one can get into the front of the courthouse without going through a security system. Certainly, I remember in '92 in Little Rock, Arkansas, the Bill Clinton first election, there was a security system there. Every one of us who had to go through the security system to even get around the tarmac was put through the security system. So when you are dealing with the airlines, all it takes is one person to phone in a bomb threat, and they take the time to take the people off the plane. It delays. There are huge disruptions and people are happy to get off the plane to make certain that there is no bomb in there. All I am saying is I see an inconsistency here.

I do not know what the policy is with other public buildings or other buildings–Government of Canada, City of Winnipeg or Richardson Building, or any private buildings, how they are run, but it does not seem to me that you would have 16 bomb threats in two years and you did not evacuate the building one time. That does not make sense to me. That is if they are serious bomb threats, and if they are not serious bomb threats, unless this is just a make-work project, what are you writing them up in your annual report for?

Mr. Pitura: The honourable member is suggesting that airport terminals do not receive bomb threats on the same basis as the provincial government does, and I would suggest to the honourable member that he might well check with the Winnipeg Airports Authority or any airport authority across the country to see if they have received bomb threats. In recent memory, I am not aware of the Winnipeg Airports Authority having to clear the Winnipeg terminal building because of a bomb threat, but I am not so sure that they have not received bomb threats. I think they go through the same process that we do in terms of doing a risk assessment on the quality of the bomb threat that has come forward. If there is a reason to believe that it is high risk, then we act accordingly. If it is a low risk, we act accordingly. There is no inconsistency whatsoever.

The honourable member knows that if you receive a bomb threat on a plane that is halfway between Winnipeg and Calgary in the air, there is only one way that plane is going to go and land as quickly as possible and evacuate the plane. In terminals, they would receive bomb threats, I am sure, on a regular basis in the terminal itself, but they do the risk assessment and do the sweep and go about their business. The honourable member would have to appreciate that if we cleared this building every time there was a bomb threat, it may well be right in the middle of his question in Question Period that he could be interrupted and asked to leave. Having staff who know how to deal with this, the sweep is going on as you are asking your question in the House, and once the sweep is done and the assessment is taken, it is business as usual. But, if there is a real threat, then there would be action taken, and they are prepared to take the action. So I do not think there is any inconsistency whatsoever. It is probably very wise management with regard to any kind of terrorist activity or bomb-threat activity.

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Mr. Maloway: Mr. Chairman, then maybe the minister could explain why there is such a serious matter over at the courthouse that people have to go through a metal detection system and empty their pockets when all they are going over there for is some statement of claim on a legal action. In one case a woman was over there getting some documents regarding her divorce, and people were lined up. You would think this was a huge, high-security area, yet just a few hundred feet away, you have a much more attractive target, that being the Legislative Building, and you have just total lack of security here in terms of what a determined person could do if they wished to.

I mean, we saw what happened in Quebec a few years ago, probably ten years ago, where it was just the luck of the guy with the gun not knowing that Question Period was in the afternoon versus the morning. If he showed up on the right day, he would have been right there firing bullets into the Chamber from the Speaker's Chair. We had a case in P.E.I. a couple of years ago where a bomb blew up outside the Legislative Building.

So I would like to know what sort of approach we do have for security here. I know that, for example, the grounds of the Legislative Building, while you put people at ease by saying, well, you have security cameras out there, the fact of the matter is your security cameras do not take pictures beyond more than 50 feet or so of the front of the building. You are not covering the whole building with the security cameras. So that is what I am trying to get at here. I know the House of Commons in Ottawa, 20 years ago when you went there, you had to check any bags. You were not allowed to take them up to the gallery. The minister says you could drive your jeep through the front door. Sure. The point is, for some reason, years and years ago the House of Commons decided that people could not go up into the gallery during Question Period with purses and handbags and briefcases. Now, they probably had a good reason for that. I do not know what it is, but they do not allow people to do it but, yet, in this Legislature and, I am sure, others across the country, you can walk up into the gallery with a briefcase, with a purse, with a shopping bag. You can walk right through the front door here with whatever kind of shopping bag you want and go up and get your ticket, go to the gallery for Question Period, and you can have whatever you want in there. There is nobody to check your bags or to question you in any way, shape, or form. Am I right in that assessment, or am I wrong in that assessment?

Mr. Pitura: When the honourable member first started out with his statement he was, I think, comparing apples and oranges here, because we were talking about bomb threats to the Legislative Building as opposed to having a security system put in place at the Law Courts with respect to violent activity. The inclusion of security and metal detectors at the Law Courts was precluded by the fact that there were individuals who made violent threats in terms of committing violent acts in the courtroom. It was deemed to be necessary to put a higher level of security at the courthouse because of the possible incidence of knives and guns being smuggled into the courtroom.

But if you are looking at bomb threats you can put a very high level of security in place and it is still possible to have a bomb threat. That does not stop the threat from happening. You may have more confidence in the bomb being placed, but the threat is still there. You have to treat it again on the basis of risk analysis. The member is talking about the further security enhancements within the building and the level of security that one would like to see. It is always a difficult road to go down, because every time I receive a class of children from a school out in my constituency and I welcome them here, I welcome them to their building and, as such, this building is for all Manitobans to have and enjoy. Keeping them outside of the building is not always necessarily the right way to go and still be allowing Manitobans to enjoy the building.

But certainly our investigation of legislative buildings across the country and the security systems that they have in place. If you go to the Quebec National Assembly, of course the honourable member referred to the shooting that took place there a number of years ago. They have a very, very high level of security to get into the legislative building there for absolutely everybody. It is like a fortress. If you go to other legislative buildings across the country, I think that Saskatchewan and Manitoba are probably the two legislative buildings that are probably the most open to the public. But there are varying levels of security procedures that have been put into place.

So far, within Manitoba, within the Legislative Building here, we are certainly aware of those things that could occur. So a lot of time is spent training staff and working out procedures by which a lot of the things that the honourable member was referring to with the shopping bags and the parcels that are left behind sitting in the gallery or whatever are soon detected right away. One of the roles of the Assembly staff is to make sure that when the Assembly is cleared of people they do a check behind them for that. Those are little things that we do for enhanced security. There may well come the day when a much higher enhanced level of security is required at all entrances to this building to control the flow of people in and out of the building, but I remind the member that I said earlier that it is a road that you go down very carefully because you have the rights of the people to enjoy the building. You also have the responsibility to provide an adequate level of security to everybody in this building that they may work here having peace and security of their person while they are working in this building. If you cannot provide them with that level, then we are going to have to enhance the level of security.

Many office buildings in this province that are in the private sector do have identification tags that are necessary, and everybody that comes in is required to sign in and/or go through some sort of security device. So maybe we are not too far away from that. Certainly we are not closing our eyes or turning our backs on any kind of security enhancement measures that we can take the opportunity of. We want to be sure that our level of security in all government buildings will allow the people who work in those buildings to have the safety and security of person. If we achieve that, then we are doing our job. If we are not achieving it, then we have got to enhance our level of security.

Mr. Maloway: Can the minister tell me what the point is of checking for bags being left up in the gallery after the Question Period or after the gallery closes as opposed to having bags checked before people get up into the gallery? Tell me what the sense is of checking afterward to see if somebody has left a bag as opposed to checking when they first go up into the gallery.

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Mr. Pitura: Right now the reason that we are doing it sort of post-event or when people get up to leave, it is a good practice to do that because it will reveal anything that is left there intentionally, but it is also great service to those people who get up out of the gallery and leave to have somebody present them with their unintended article that they left there. So there are a bit of pluses here on both sides.

However, we are looking–and let us share this with the member–and trying to work with the Legislative Assembly Management Commission and the Clerk's staff on little enhancements to the security procedures within the Legislative Building that, as the member indicated, could require people who carry in parcels or bags or briefcases and want to go up to the gallery to have to check them. It will not be the end of the world for those people who have to do that. I think what we are trying to do in taking a look at and studying is how we can put something like that into place that allows the individuals to check their bags or their briefcases and know that they are fully secured while they are up in the gallery, and then they can come back and pick them up. Once that happens, then it also throws in a different angle to the whole thing from the standpoint that now you have all of these parcels and briefcases and bags in one spot.

An Honourable Member: In your office.

Mr. Pitura: Well, no, I thought maybe they could be checked in at the honourable member's office, but I think the honourable member knows what I am talking about is the fact that you are in effect allowing somebody who knows the system to be able–and if they wanted to do a very good job in terms of violent action. Then you say, well, you have to be able to check each parcel and bag and briefcase and whatnot for some sort of detection device to be able to ensure that they are clean. So you add that variable to it that has to be looked after.

So it is not an easy job to just say we are going to enhance this, enhance this, because there are ramifications of each action that you take. For every positive action you take, there is always probably a negative action that occurs. So you do the best you can, but we are looking at it. We want to enhance the security, and we do not want to be obtrusive about it.

Mr. Maloway: There were also a total of 42 threats over a two-year period, threats directed towards elected officials and staff. Can the minister outline for us what the nature of these threats were and what sorts of conclusions he has come to as to how to better protect the people in question?

Mr. Pitura: Mr. Chairperson, I am advised that it is very difficult to capsualize for the member in terms of categorizing the threats, in that they were verbal threats, threats received via the different modes of communication that we have, maybe some like I am going to come and, you know, flatten your nose, to maybe some more violent nature. But they are basically just threats that are made against people who are in this building or work in this building. When these persons receive these threats, they deem it important enough to advise security for the building about them. I am sure that many of us have received threats that would not even make it to the security desk, but these individuals have felt that these threats were important enough in terms of the safety and security of their person; they felt they should have the assistance of security in being able to deal with them.

Mr. Maloway: So these are not cases where the threats are made to security, and then security presumably tells the official. Well, how many would there be like that, and do they tell the official in all cases?

Mr. Pitura: I am advised that the threats come in different modes. Some of them will come directly to security, but probably, by and large, most of them will go to the offices, that an individual will call that office and directly threaten the front office staff in that office, in which case they report it to security. Security does the investigation on each threat and then documents them as well as the bomb threats, so that the better the documentation you have on file, the easier it is, the next time you go around and you receive a personal threat or a bomb threat, to be able to investigate.

Mr. Maloway: Let us go back to the court again. I would like to know roughly how many bomb threats over those last two years the courthouse would have received and how many threats towards officials over there the courts would have received.

Mr. Pitura: I am advised we do not have the documented evidence for the courthouse with us, but we can obtain that information for the member.

Mr. Maloway: I am not condemning the minister here. I am just making the observation that it seems that you must have an awful lot of bomb threats and threats toward court officials if you have set up a system over there that has metal detectors and basically a real high level of security for people going into the courthouse. I think I know why it is there, but it still does not stop somebody, whose intention is to do things, to simply bypass the courthouse and come right to the big house over here.

I mean, the people can figure out that this is the place where the laws are made, and the Legislature is sort of an attraction for people with grievances, so it does not make sense to me that if you are going to go with this big system over at the courthouse, you leave the Legislature totally open. Either you are underreacting over here and overreacting over there, or whatever. There is an inconsistency anyway in the fact that the buildings are so close together. So presumably they have had a much larger number of bomb threats and threats against courthouse officials than you have over here for them to take the action that they have.

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Mr. Pitura: I think the honourable member compares the courthouse to the Legislative Building. Within the confines of the courthouse, of course, there are many more individuals involved in the daily courthouse proceedings that could indeed be the target of violence, whether it be a judge or whether it be a Crown counsel, or whether it be a protected witness. There are probably many more reasons why one should be on guard and have a higher level of sophistication with regard to security at the courthouse as opposed to here.

As the member is probably aware, most of the incidents that have occurred in terms of many violent incidents have taken place within the courthouse. As a comparison, over here at the Legislative Building, very little of that happens. So there is a requirement and a need for the enhanced level of security at the Law Courts Building. In fact, I do not think it is dissimilar from any law courts building across this country in terms of the level of security.

But it is quite unusual to see that level of security in a legislative building. As I said to the member earlier, there is only one building in Canada that has that level of security, to my knowledge, and that is the Quebec National Assembly. All the rest of the legislative buildings have a lower level of security.

Some of the buildings, the way they are designed, it works very easy just having the staff confronting everybody who comes through the building. We have a beautiful foyer and entranceway here. It poses a problem in terms of being able to ensure that all people coming through the front doors have to channel through security. So there are some logistics there. Saskatchewan has a narrow hallway in theirs, so they are able to squeeze everybody in past the registration desk.

But the courthouse is probably subject to more incidents of violence because of the nature of the business that is conducted there, as opposed to the Legislature.

Mr. Maloway: So the minister has no plans currently to install a system similar to the courthouse system over here at the Legislative Building.

Mr. Pitura: No, not at the present time. But I would share with the honourable member that we are constantly looking at security and at improving security for the individuals who work here, and at the same time not be overly obtrusive for the public who come through the door. It is a delicate balance we are trying to achieve. Hopefully, we will always be on the right side of the decision making on this one.

Mr. Maloway: Now on the Legislative grounds itself, I understood that there are cameras and there are patrols and so on, but there are cameras covering the whole area here. But I understand that is not in fact the case, that the cameras, in the front anyway, do not even cover the parking lot up front. As a matter of fact, they only go to a few cars to the left and to the right.

Now over the last few years there has been at least one case of an MLA being accosted in front of the building. There was another one who was locked in his trunk. If there had been cameras trained in that area, presumably this would have been on tape. I would like to ask the minister then, why is that the case? Is the price of cameras too expensive? What is the reason for only a small portion of the front of the building being covered by these cameras?

Was there ever a resolution in the case of the member who was locked in the trunk? Did you ever have any tape of that? If so, what was the final resolution? That was a few years ago. We have not heard any final resolution on that.

Mr. Pitura: I think, with regard to the camera surveillance, the ultimate goal with the surveillance cameras on the building was to be able to monitor activity around the building. I am advised that in terms of the camera and the camera angles and the way they are set up is that any kind of activity along the building can be picked up by the camera. So, if there is somebody lurking in the shadows along the side of the building, they will be picked up by the camera. But the camera does not, as the member states, in terms of the parking lot, go out very far because it is designed to secure the perimeter of the building.

There is an additional camera down by the walkway at the river. I am also advised that the Lieutenant Governor's house is covered as well. But the cameras are not put into place to cover activity over the entire grounds; they are basically around the building. As an addendum to that, if there are staff working here late at night, if deemed necessary–well, actually it does not have to be deemed necessary. There does not have to be a request. Our security staff will approach the individuals who are leaving the building, especially the female individuals, to escort them and walk with them to the vehicles to ensure their safety.

I think the honourable member can appreciate that the only way you are going to have a real high level of safety and security is if you turn it into a fortress and have tons of people around. But the security that works in the building here does a very good job, and they certainly look after people who are leaving this building after hours. They also have building perimeter patrols at night around the outside of the building just to ensure that there is no threat.

The member is also probably very much aware of the changes in the shrubbery that have occurred around the perimeter of the building where the types of shrubs that are planted are such that it is more difficult to use as a camouflage or something to hide behind. So we have taken steps like that to make it more spacious, more open, more brightly lit, so that is the level of security that we have there right now with regard to the cameras.

The honourable member should appreciate the fact that you can never design a camera that is going to be foolproof and always catch the perpetrator on the lens. It sometimes happens in a 7-Eleven store, but when you have a camera that is always moving, constantly moving on a 180 plane or grader, there is the opportunity for perpetrators to get an idea where the camera is focusing and to be always outside that angle. So that is why we have the perimeter building patrols to ensure that there are no people lurking around the edge of the building.

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Mr. Maloway: Maybe a month ago, a few weeks ago the courthouse was hit with graffiti. I believe, I think the LG's residence was tagged as well. I would like to know just what the minister's policy is on graffiti and what was actually done about it. I have not checked lately but I know that the graffiti was still up there the next day. I understood it was certainly the policy of the city graffiti co-ordinator–I was at a meeting where he was at just last week. Their policy is to try to identify it and get it changed immediately so as to not draw more activity of that type. This was still on the buildings the next day. I wonder what eventually happened there and what is your policy towards this.

Mr. Pitura: Our policy with respect to graffiti being applied to any government building is to clean it up as soon as possible. I think, when this story appeared in the paper, the graffiti was applied, from the sources and the documentation we received on camera surveillance, approximately 3 a.m. By 8 a.m. it was almost fully removed on the Law Courts Building and the LG's residence, and by 11 a.m. that day it was all done. We are talking about approximately five to eight hours after it was sprayed on, it was taken off. The only difficulty we had was with the statue of Louis Riel where the graffiti group that is organized by the City of Winnipeg had a great deal of difficulty taking it off. But they do have an excellent group, I am told, of graffiti fighters in terms of getting rid of the graffiti. They were there first thing in the morning to get rid of the graffiti.

That is really one of the best policies with respect to graffiti, is that people who do it go back there to see what their work is like the next day and it is not there. That is maddening to them and it frustrates them and they are probably not going to do it again. That leads me to another comment, where the honourable member's colleague has brought forward graffiti legislation. It very simply puts down, if the perpetrator is caught, there is a $500 fine, I believe, or community service. I do not know of too many graffiti makers that get caught. In fact, most of them do not get caught. So I really question the validity of that legislation as to what effect it will have. I think what we have done is probably the best thing you can do is get rid of it before they have a chance to get up out of their beds and come back and have a look at their artistry.

Mr. Maloway: I appreciate what the policy is. Maybe we are talking about different incidents because this was the one that occurred just about a few weeks ago at the courthouse. I know that my assistant was at a meeting on Henderson Highway and the reporter that was there was called away to some disruption downtown at the courthouse. The question of graffiti was brought up and this was around noon, 11 to noon. At six o'clock that night when I left the building I drove around the courthouse, and all that graffiti was still up there, was up at six o'clock at night. So I think maybe the information is a little bit–maybe you are out by a day. Perhaps it was dealt with the next day, but certainly six o'clock that night it was still on. I am talking about this one. I could give you the date, but I would have to check with my records.

Mr. Pitura: I am advised that there were actually two incidents when graffiti was applied to the Law Courts Building. I think the one I was referring to was the first one that was cleaned up very quickly and the second one was the one that occurred the following night. [interjection]

No, maybe it was not cleaned up as quickly, but it was more difficult I think in terms of being able to get rid of it.

Mr. Maloway: There is a new high security prison being built in south Winnipeg right now to handle a trial this fall. I would like to know just what is happening with that right now. I think the figures were at $4 million or something like that for the cost of this. I was interested in knowing why that particular location was chosen. Why could you not simply conduct this trial in the existing facilities? Just what is the rationale for spending that kind of money on this kind of facility?

Mr. Pitura: If I can share with the honourable member, firstly, if we take a look at the configuration of the interior of the courthouse in which there are approximately 30 to 35 defendants, accused. According to the laws of the land, parliamentary law, all of the accused must have a line of sight direct to the jury and must have a line of sight direct to the judge. Therefore, you have to establish 30 to 35 areas where the defendants have a straight line of sight to the jury and to the judge. That is one of the requirements that was necessary.

So the honourable member can appreciate that in the provincial Law Courts building, none of the courtrooms were able to accommodate 35 accused being able to have that straight line of sight. Therefore we needed to have a courtroom that was fairly spacious and designed in such a way that the accused would have this line of sight.

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Secondly, if they have 30 to 35 accused in a courtroom, it is indeed possible to have 30 to 35 defence attorneys. So the question is, in a normal courtroom, where do you seat that many defence attorneys? That was the second problem that had to be overcome, so that had to be done. Also, space had to be provided for Crown counsel as well. So the interior configuration of the courtroom had to be established in that manner so that you would be able to meet those specifications.

Now we go to the outside of the courtroom. We know how much space we need on the inside. We know we have to get the accused in and out of the courtroom facility. We have to provide decent accommodation for the jury. We have to provide accommodation for the defence attorneys. We have to provide accommodation for the Crown counsel. So it was imperative to get a building of substantive size to be able to accommodate that.

Now, in terms of location, we are looking at a location that was not adjacent to a residential area. We are looking at a location that was easy to have a security perimeter fence put into place, where we can control vehicles on and off the property. We also wanted to find a location where, should something happen down the road a piece, that we would have a piece of property that we could put onto the retail market if constitutionally this thing did not fly, because it is the federal government that brought in the new legislation which says that you can charge people on a conspiracy charge, but what happens if it does not hold up constitutionally and we have this huge courtroom? If it holds up, that will be probably one of the most highly used courtrooms going, and, in fact, it may even be utilized by other jurisdictions for their use as well. In fact, I would like to market it that way.

But it all had to be selected on that basis, and that is what brought us to Chevrier Boulevard, was the fact that that was the only location in the city that was able to accommodate all of the requests that Justice had with respect to the inside criteria and the outside criteria.

Mr. Maloway: Well, who found the building, and how was the price established?

Mr. Pitura: Mr. Chairperson, basically, the Accommodation Division of the department went on a search with that criteria in mind, made some contacts with people in the realty business, for one, and found out all the property listing. Then they also were advised about who the owners were of certain properties that were looking at the possibility of leasing or selling their properties.

So they went on a search, and all of the potential properties were catalogued. We tried to do the best thing possible. First, at City of Winnipeg, did they have any building space that would be available? We could utilize that. We were advised that there was not any available. Also Public Works Canada, we thought that if they had a sufficiently large enough building we could use that. That was not available. We went to National Defence. We said, now, National Defence has got to have a lot of buildings that are the right size, like a hangar or anything like that that could be temporarily put into place, only to be advised that, sorry, because the Pan Am Games were conflicting with your space they could not guarantee us any space until after the Pan Am Games.

Our information was that we needed it to happen sooner, because there is a constitutional right to a trial, apparently, when you are the accused. So once we did take a look at some–I do not even think we saw more than one. That was the only the property that fit the criteria, if I am not mistaken. All the rest of the properties had some sort of problems with them, that were in the private domain, that were identified.

We looked at approximately 13 different properties. Each one, well, it was either, you know, you had the residential area too close, you could not secure the perimeter, or the inside of the building, in terms of configuration, did not have large enough rooms, did not have enough floor space or whatever to accommodate. So we ended up at Chevrier Boulevard.

The first recourse was to lease the building, right? We just wanted a temporary courtroom to utilize, but when we started to take a look at the long-term implications for this and the fact that the trial, if it was contested on the basis of constitutionality for first, and then there was the trial and then there were appeals, the way the courtroom was set up is it can be used as a Court of Appeal. There is sufficient room for three judges there. You went through the whole process, but indeed if you went to a three-year lease, it might be way beyond three years by the time the whole issue is resolved. So we made the decision that it was a better investment for us to purchase the property and renovate the building. At the same time, I think the area that we have the property in is an area that is rapidly expanding

An Honourable Member: How did you establish a price?

Mr. Pitura: We established a price with Land Management Services, which is an SOA within Government Services. They did the real estate appraisal on the property in terms of the value of the property.

Mr. Maloway: I am sorry to interrupt the minister, but we only have 10 more minutes left. I want to get as many of these questions asked as possible.

How many appraisals did they do? I imagine there is a standard number they do when Land Management appraises property.

Mr. Pitura: Land Management Services, a large number of their staff are qualified real estate appraisers. As such, they have a lot of experience in real estate appraisals and have done a lot of work in terms of appraising real estate.

Mr. Maloway: Can we get a copy of the appraisal assuming that only one was done?

Mr. Pitura: I am not sure. We will have some discussion with Land Management Services. I am just not positive or sure about whether these are appraisals or not. I presume they do. But for the honourable member's information, we paid $1.5 billion for the building and that was within the appraised value parameters–[interjection] Building and land. That was the value that was placed on that property by LMS as being a fair value for that property. If we cannot supply the appraisal to the member, then I trust that the member will accept the $1.5 billion as being the appraised value of that property.

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Mr. Maloway: The final cost of the building then, when it is completed, will be what, because I have heard different figures.

Mr. Pitura: I am advised the approximate cost, finished, is $3.6 million.

Mr. Maloway: I would like to ask the minister what is the current status of the Headingley jail situation. Back in '96 I guess it was, there was the big riot at the jail. The minister who is no longer the Minister of Justice, I heard her on the radio echoing the sentiments of a lot of Manitobans at the time saying that the people who caused this riot should be responsible for the cleanup. Their hopes were all dashed when reality set in, and we realized that the prisoners did not end up cleaning anything. They created the mess and then the public ended up having to rebuild the jail. So I wonder in the final analysis how things turned out, because I think there were various incarnations of the plans. I would like to know just what the final cost was and what the final state of affairs was with regard to the reconstruction of Headingley jail.

Mr. Pitura: I guess some numbers are being found for the costs. I would share with the member that as far as the renovations in the existing Headingley jail are concerned, we are on the last phase of the renovations and upgrading to the old jail with the smoke detection and fire alarm systems being installed. That is moving ahead. As the member is probably aware, we are in the process of building a 76-bed maximum security unit and a 76-bed minimum security unit. We are also adding a minimum security unit. As well, these two new minimum-maximum security units are on the west side of the building and the minimum security unit is on the south side of the building. With regard to that, the construction is going on all fronts on both the minimum and the maximum security building. There was a reason to build both those buildings at the same time, because the fact is that they basically use the same basic design. So, as a result, all of the approach to it could be on a turnkey basis, with the buildings virtually going up together. It will provide us with approximately 152 extra beds once completed of both minimum and maximum security plus I believe there are 42 or 48 beds in the additional structure on the south side of the building.

Things are moving, progressing well. I guess, ideally, it would be nice to have a high vacancy rate in that place, but we will wait and see what happens.

Mr. Maloway: I just would like to know how this new construction will be different from the old construction. The old construction evidently had open ranges where people could wander around, and they did I believe. I assume that that has been changed now. So I would like some confirmation as to that.

Also, there was an article the other day in the paper regarding the boot camp at Agassiz. I know the government made a lot of pronouncements about that just before the last election of how tough things were going to be, and it does not sound like things are that tough in the boot camp. Although, if the article is correct, it does sound like there are some good improvements there over the old system. The question is in Headingley jail. What other changes, other than closing the ranges a bit, are there? The televisions are the same as they were before, or what sort of changes have you made to toughen things up in Headingley?

Mr. Pitura: I am not an engineer, nor am I a corrections expert, but a number of changes have taken place in Headingley which will really improve the security in the existing building, and the member already alluded to one as the elimination of the ranges. Things like electronic mechanical lockdowns, very important, which was not in place before. There is the ability right now to do a total lockdown with the flick of a switch, and before this it just was not possible. It had to be manually locked down. So there are improvements along that way. Every guard station that has been rebuilt in that place is designed and built to take a sustained attack, which is one of the other failings of the old institutions, that the inmates were able to take control of the guard post. There are improvements in that venue that makes the building a lot more secure for keeping the inmates there in check and as well providing some more safety and security for the staff who operate in there.

Of course, the new maximum and the new minimum security buildings will be state-of-the-art type of technology. In fact, in the maximum security unit, it is set up in such a way that if one of the offenders that is locked up decides he wants to burn down the building and lights a fire in his cell, it is possible to exhaust that smoke directly right out without having to evacuate any inmate in that prison. So those are some of the new high-tech features that are in this new building.

Mr. Maloway: I guess what I am also asking is, in the boot camp area, the TVs have been removed, the inmates are going on an educational program, they are working more. What is happening in Headingley jail? Are you applying some of the same successful methods that appear to be working in Agassiz in the jail, or are they still watching TV and doing drugs and other things in that jail?

Mr. Pitura: I appreciate the question from the honourable member, but we build the buildings. We operate the buildings. We ensure they are functioning properly. We, unfortunately, do not run the programs that are inside those buildings. So, as much as I would like to be able to give the honourable member a positive answer to that, I think the best place to ask that question is in the Department of Justice.

Mr. Chairperson: The time being six o'clock, committee rise.