Bob Bromley

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are to the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources. I would like to chat about fracking in the Sahtu. This week the Minister of ITI explained that it was the responsibility of ENR to look at the social and environmental impacts of fracking.

I am wondering: How is our ENR Minister working to ensure that fracking projects such as those being promoted by ITI are sustainable? By sustainable, I mean that we are looking at the three pillars of sustainability: economic, social and environmental. Mahsi.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to follow up with Ms. Bisaro’s comment about the status of this budget staying the same since 2000 at $28 million. I think operational costs have certainly become a challenge and I know the Minister was dead on with that, but unfortunately, I think the expenses, general expenses, part of that equation means that infrastructure expense costs have escalated quite considerably at the same time. For example, I think our Minister of Finance has told us that we used to spend $75 million in our capital budget and we were happy to do that when we could achieve it...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I continue with lessons learned from our fracking tour and applying those lessons to the North. Too much of anything can be a bad thing. Fracking is about too much of many things, too much of so much that I made a list:

too many trucks on too many roads;

too many wells flaring too much gas;

too much fresh water going down a well and too much dirty water coming back up;

too many pipelines, oil pipelines, gas pipelines, freshwater pipelines and produced water pipelines,

too many workers coming in from faraway places; and driving it all,

too much money.

This is what...

Thank you, Madam Chair. My last one. I see 159, according to my math, major retrofits proposed in this draft budget. First of all, I’m assuming these will include the attempt to bring our standards up to AEDG or as close as we can get. What proportion would this put us at now for all our units, given all the other renos we’ve done AEDG? If that’s not handy, maybe the Minister could provide that at some point in time. Thank you.

Thanks for that from the Minister. A couple of other things, there’s been a lot of interest expressed on small houses, especially for seniors. Where are we at on that, Madam Chair? Are some of the units being proposed here small houses for seniors, or small units? Thank you.

It just seems that we are more than doubling our budget here and where is that money coming from?

Thank you. I just have a quick question on the general budget here. Each year our CMHC contribution has declined. It is a financial sustainability problem. We have been implementing a new strategic plan through the Housing Corporation with a lot of support from this side of the House for initiatives that have been put forward by the Minister and his staff. I’m just wondering if I can get a quick update on where we are at and how the strategic plan implementation is improving our status in terms of long-term financial sustainability. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just have one topic I would like to bring up and that’s the energy initiatives. I know the Housing Corporation has been looking into biomass initiatives and they have other energy projects. We will talk about that under detail, but just in terms of the biomass initiatives, I’m aware that the corporation is facing ever-increasing pressures, as every resident and business is in the Northwest Territories, of heating and power, but on the heating front, I’m just wondering if I can get an idea of where we’re at. I think we’re looking into feasibility studies and I was...

I don’t recall making any such assumptions that we’re not going to need fuel for aircraft and so on. Whati was a bad example. I thought that was one that you were contemplating in the distant future, but I see now it’s actually part of this budget. I was meaning can we look an extra year or two down the road and start doing the work – the Minister said this seems like a reasonable approach – so that we can avoid and even delay and, in those delays, enjoy some savings for a few years to some of this work. But thanks to the Minister. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This type of development, fracking well pads every four miles with up to 40 wells per pad now, roads and pipelines criss-crossing the land has never taken place in an area this far north and with the challenges the Sahtu poses. I know the Minister is aware there’s a world of difference between what we saw, for example, in North Dakota/Saskatchewan where you can put in a road in an afternoon and reclaim it in a couple of days.

Could the Minister explain how ENR will decide how much fracking or development associated with fracking is too much, given that we don’t have...