Alfred Moses

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m just going to follow up to a Member’s statement I made earlier this week, and it’s in regard to the gas situation that’s happening in Inuvik. We’re looking at finding solutions and actually making things a little bit better for our businesses and our residents in Inuvik. Actually, my questions for today are for the Minister responsible for the Northwest Territories Power Corporation.

I’d like to ask him, in regard to a statement that he had made March 13th of this year, in regard to the policy review considered in terms of replacing the net billing with the net...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Further to my opening Member’s statement earlier today, I’d like to ask the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment some questions in regard to the Aurora College campus in Inuvik and the lack of programs that are actually at the campus itself, in the facilities.

I would just like to ask the Minister, starting off: How are programs distributed throughout the three campuses in the Northwest Territories? How do we decide which campus gets which program and moving forward from there? That will be my first question. Just how are programs distributed, diploma programs...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I know the Minister can’t answer the second question I was going to go into, but has the Minister, speaking with his colleagues on the Executive Council and Cabinet, talked about what types of programs are needed for the Inuvik-Tuk highway, for the early childhood Children’s First Centre or the other projects that we have going on in Inuvik? Has he spoken with his Cabinet colleagues to say we need these programs in Inuvik so that our leaders, as stated in the statement earlier, do get addressed and we want to hold accountable providing those programs? Has he spoken with...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Just recently we had a bunch of graduation ceremonies through our three campuses in the Aurora College throughout the NWT. I’ll just read off some numbers for you here. We had 84 in Yellowknife at the Yellowknife Campus, 41 at the campus in Fort Smith, and a whopping 16 in Inuvik. Something is wrong here with the numbers and it’s not because we’re not getting the enrollments into the school, it’s because we’re not putting the programs where the programs are needed within the communities that are asking for them.

We have great facilities in the community of Inuvik at the...

Mr. Speaker, being new to the Legislative Assembly, I’m finding out new processes, the way things are being done. My understanding, from what the Minister just said, is the board of directors make the final decisions on where programs are being offered. Why is there not a process where the Minister might make the final write-off on where these programs are sent? Or would the Minister take those recommendations from the board of directors, bring it back to standing committee, and standing committee can have some recommendation into how those programs are being delivered?

Obviously, we have a...

A lot of really good answers there and very positive. The situation, as I mentioned, January, February, March were almost disastrous to some of the families that have to deal with the high costs that they experienced. I guess my next question is the timeline. The Minister did mention the fall time, but for any residents, we want to put them at ease. Is there an exact date? Are we looking at August, September, October that we’ll have this type of system in place before it gets cold and we start experiencing the cold of the winter months? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Following up on my Member’s statement earlier today about the situation that we’re dealing with in Inuvik, my questions today are for the Minister responsible for the NWT Power Corporation, or the Minister of Finance. He made a statement in his budget address for the ‘13-14 fiscal year, and he had mentioned that there was $100,000 that was allocated to advance the liquid natural gas solution for the community of Inuvik with the situation that they find themselves in right now. I’d like to get an update on how that $100,000 has been spent and where we are in terms of...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Since the last time we sat in this House, I’ve had a lot of meetings with our constituents back home in Inuvik and also other organizations in the NWT. As much as all of the concerns that were brought to my attention were very important, there’s one that’s always going to be very important to me and the constituents and residents of the community I reside in, Inuvik, and that’s the situation we are dealing with right now, and that’s the gas situation.

In January, February and March, we saw really high fuel prices for those that are on the synthetic natural gas system. In...

I think that’s great news for the residents of Inuvik that in the fall time we should have something up and ready.

In terms of storage, I think we had about 20-some days where the road was closed during the wintertime. I’d like to ask the Minister, with this liquid natural gas in terms of storage, what is the plan on putting to storage and how many days can we see this LNG be stored for should we have a road closure? How many days will we have a supply of liquid natural gas to the community of Inuvik? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to recognize a wise and knowledgeable constituent from Inuvik whose support and dedication to his family is one of high standard, a strong role model, community leader and an elder and a leader in his own way, my father, Mr. Winston John Moses. Welcome.