Bob Bromley

I will take that as a no, they won’t protect the people of the South Slave from that excess power charge.

This government seems willing to make decisions in a policy vacuum and without input, any input, an iota of input from Regular Members or Aboriginally owned communities, companies and consumers or communities, for that matter. As a Regular Member, I am acutely aware of the lack of such a policy and am uncomfortable, to say the least, to leaving such decisions to Cabinet’s most recent whims.

My question is: When can we expect a rigorous, comprehensive and collaborative process to develop the...

I will let that stand for itself. Government has decided to support communities in opening their franchises for power delivery and distribution, suggesting that there is money to be saved, as the Minister just said, and that the cost of living will be lowered significantly through competition. The cost of power generation is as significant, or more significant even, than distribution.

Is the Minister now also prepared to give communities the discretion to open power generation to competition in order to fully address power costs for both our consumers, the environment and our communities? Mahsi...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d also like to recognize some constituents from Weledeh today: Joe Walsh, who has just been mentioned; also Lois Little I see up there, and Carole Robinson, Joan Hirons. There may be others. Welcome to the House.

Mark Heyck, our mayor. It’s always great to see him here when he can get here. I’d also like to recognize the MLA for Nelson, Mr. Woods from the Northern Territory. It’s really great to have him in the House as well. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I completely agree with the Minister. My comments are in line with that. For example, I see development of the energy policy with our new responsibilities, and particularly renewable energy, as some real opportunities for spending some of those remaining dollars, and I think we need a debate on whether it’s best needed there or any other area such as that that committee might come up with versus the communications side of things. Committee did offer comments with respect to the communications side of things that we weren’t convinced that we needed a change in structure...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I guess where the debate becomes important is this 900-and-whatever-thousand dollars, over ten years that’s $9 million. These are significant dollars that we’re talking about, and we know that there are very serious needs in a number of priorities – and I know the Premier and the Minister would agree – and we have not had that debate on where these dollars would go towards the delivery of our new priorities. That’s talking about the $63,000 million, $65 million. So that’s a process problem again.

The last communications we had from the Premier on this was that the Cabinet...

No question.

I appreciate the Minister’s comments but, I mean, many of us take a completely different view. It’s that we’re not doing the right things to retain our people. We are training some of the best people in the world, very professional people coming out of the Northwest Territories and they’re leaving, or not returning, after education. Why is that?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’d just like to follow up on my colleague Ms. Bisaro’s comments. I’m obviously uncomfortable with this without the context of what the strategy is, something we’ve heard talked about for years but have never seen the pudding.

Did I hear that we’re going to spend something like $100,000 on communication materials? And if I did, maybe I can get some explanation, in this day and age of busying your thumbs for a couple of minutes and being able to communicate across the globe, exactly what that $100,000 is going to.

There wasn’t an answer there, but I do congratulate Lutselk’e by taking the bull by the horns and finessing a power purchase agreement, a rare animal indeed, from the Power Corporation.

Cabinet has severely restricted the power of the supposedly arm’s-length Public Utilities Board to protect the public by restricting their ability to adjust power rates by more than 1 percent per year. This change means correction to the 30 percent excess NTPC charges South Slave Power was assessed in 2008, the last time they did a cost of power study, could take decades.

As the government has arbitrarily taken...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to follow up on my Member’s statement on energy policy, and I direct it to whichever Minister takes responsibility for the current energy policy vacuum under which we are operating.

The government, as a regulator, needs to provide and be seen to provide a level playing field for businesses to be able to fairly compete and thrive.

How fair and level is the playing field when a private, highly regulated utility must bid against a publicly owned business directly and indirectly subsidized by over $100 million in recent years? And I mean this. On what basis has this...