Bob Bromley

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister. So, when will consultations start here? When will we see midwifery here and what the heck is the NWT Advisory Committee on Midwifery? Thank you.

Thanks to the Minister for providing that clarification. The original midwifery report, NWT report, identified Inuvik as one of the four locations of interest, but Health has now decided to support doctors with obstetric skills instead, plus the one position. I am hearing concern about lack of consultation leading up to this decision in the Beaufort-Delta. It seems prudent to ask the public for their opinion before opting for a very different model that does not include midwives.

I ask the Minister who was consulted in the Beau-Del and what public engagement was conducted before the...

Thank you. I move we report progress.

---Defeated

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to welcome and recognize a bunch of young constituents and future leaders from the school in Ndilo, the K’alemi Dene School, and I wonder if they could stand up as I mention their names. We have here David Sangris, D.J. Drygeese, Aurora Fraser, Kaiya Goulet, Amy Betsina, Devon Vogel, Justin Lafferty, Cheyenne Lafferty, Stefon Franki, Nick Beaulieu, Kaydens Abel, Dakota Mackeinzo, Donovan Black Quitte, Riel Komrie, and they are accompanied by Tiffany Smith, education assistant; and teacher Anna Hernandez.

I’d like to just mention, when I asked this bunch of young...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I don’t want to spend any more time on this, Madam Chair, but we’ve been interested before and an expression of interest is not a commitment. An expression of interest is curiosity. We need commitment. We have passed over and over again the opportunity to put in renewable energy to avoid these costs. We could do a much more significant effort here had we taken the sufficient funds last year to put in five megawatts that would have handled at least a third to a half of the monthly demands now forecasted in materials the Minister has provided us with from the Power...

Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to conclude my Member’s statement.

---Unanimous consent granted

Thanks to the deputy minister for that response. I know he’s aware that some of the conventional authorities are forecasting $20 a barrel of oil. Certainly the price is dropping and it’s anticipated to continue to drop. I believe we budgeted about $1 per litre and I’m wondering, if that’s so, what are the potential savings on this purchase?

We have to do both and to do it effectively, it takes planning. I think the Minister would agree with that. How, in what modest way, are we planning to use some of this $22 million to do both?

We’re spending now $50 million over the last 12 months and planning for the next eight or ten months so that people that could experience high power rates would be protected from those. The latest information shows that we’re talking billions of dollars for public infrastructure and damages over the next 15 years. Then we have private, commercial and institutional infrastructure. Are we planning on bailing out all of those to protect our public from the costs of climate change in this manner?

I’m disappointed that we, as a government, are not on top of that equation, and we should have been for the last several years. We heard just a month or so ago about the storm surges and whatnot in Tuktoyaktuk that left some government buildings hanging over the water, oil tanks suspended or lost into the sea and so on. We’re losing, in some areas, 10 metres of coastline per year there. I’d say the writing is on the wall for that community.

We’re looking at $22 million here on top of the $32 million for the fire suppression this year. Have we estimated the cost? Are we planning on what to do or...