Bob Bromley

I would just like to follow up on my colleague’s questions. My understanding is that industry’s use of the winter roads is a great cost to government and can really beat up the infrastructure. That has certainly been found in every jurisdiction. Is that the experience of this government?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just on the dollars for additional engineering studies related to drainage and permafrost studies on the Inuvik runway, how much have we spent so far on that project, and were these unanticipated dollars or are we just trying to move things forward in the future? Thank you.

I would hope so. Thank you. Hopefully, we’ve learned that we have to get all departments working together, but I appreciate this Minister taking the lead. I have taken the opportunity to discuss wind with Diavik. The experts there say wind, diesel and batteries are cookie cutter now. They are not experimental. We are way behind the eight ball on this. The Power Corp has not touched wind in 40 years. I’m very happy to see the work that’s being done in Colville Lake with this model because this model can work with solar as well. So we are doing solar in Colville, which is appropriate; they don’t...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to follow up on my colleague’s questions and he actually asked most of the questions I had. Would the Minister know how many adults and children we have in care and what the total costs are that this amount is supplementing?

Thank you. I appreciate that. So, I would ask the Minister if he would indeed commit to, for example, approaching Diavik to learn about their wind project and how it might be considered in our communities, or some other model that they would recommend and how we can work with industry to establish standards that they must meet so that this isn’t a one-off thing that comes in towards the end of the life of a project. It is a requirement from the beginning, as the Diavik wind expert has recommended, and some of the other things that the deputy minister recommended, I appreciate sharing and...

Again, I’m absolutely disgusted that we would be partnering with entities like this when we are responsible for providing these basic services from our own revenues. I completely disagree with this and I would ask the Minister to closely examine the basis of this partnership and others such as this and the impacts. I would ask him to research the impacts of putting logos from multinationals like this into the homes of our youngest and most impressionable as supposedly part of our early childhood development programs.

What is the investment from this multi-national company that’s partly responsible for the greatest threat to civilization that we are choosing to partnership with, this public government is choosing to partner with? What are the contributions that we are on our knees for, despite our responsibility to fund these programs from tax dollars for our public this year and next?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. That is basically all I had. I think I will leave it at that with one last question, Mr. Chair.

Would the Minister commit to telling us, or getting back to us through committee, what the standards are that will dictate whether it was a success or not, whether it is working and how we can expand it if it is? Thank you.

I believe I’ve heard our Premier say repeatedly that this is a priority to get these recommendations from our country’s best and pursue them quickly, so I guess I would ask the Minister if he would, the week after the report comes out, if it does confirm an energy efficiency act, that he would be prepared to come forward and seek very expeditiously the resources required to get that legislation in place.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I know the Minister has heard me speaking in a similar vein by suggesting examination of an alternative model that has not been well used but has a record of success where it was tested and that’s the guaranteed basic income. I appreciate the Minister’s agreement to look at that and perhaps consider something like that for a regional model if the economics worked out. I think right now we are doing not too bad a job of holding people where they’re at, but I don’t think that’s the goal of our government. We want to help them out of poverty and into employment and better...