Bob Bromley

Mr. Speaker, thanks to the Minister for those comments. In the area of natural gas to communities for energy supplies, I’m wondering if the Minister would commit to giving serious effort to working with communities to come up with some sort of ultimate solutions rather than these interim fossil fuel solutions that could prove to be very expensive — leapfrogging, as many communities are choosing to do, to a renewable energy source — or at least giving that some thought and investigation.

I’m afraid I cannot thank the Minister for that; I didn’t hear an answer there. Clearly, this is a source of greenhouse gas emissions. We are talking energy issues here. This is probably the biggest single source of increasing the cost of living; let’s put it that way. What are we doing to come up with new ways of transportation that do not require hundreds of millions of dollars of investment every decade in highways and so on and that can actually reduce our costs? What are we doing outside the box that is creative and is actually going to decrease our costs and emissions from transportation...

Third time lucky. I would also like to recognize Mr. Brian Kardash, a resident of Weledeh, and of course his father. I would also like to recognize Sue Bevington and her companion, also residents of Weledeh.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am encouraged to see this government bring some focused attention to our energy issues in its recent Energy Priorities Framework. In particular, I see us beginning to act in ways that recognize the need to reduce energy costs through common sense activities like conservation, efficiency and switching to local and renewable sources.

The framework is full of excellent recommendations. I suggest that our people take a look at this. I see it is open for comments, and the government is obviously wanting feedback on it. I encourage people to do so.

However, significant gaps...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to begin by reiterating that this idea came from the people, and I’m just one of the vehicles here bringing this forward. It has been stressed that this is a preventative and creative approach. It has got an element of fairness to it — small communities and so on, the potential to be revenue neutral. There is absolutely no duplication with the Food Mail Program.

I have to comment briefly on some of the spurious arguments I have heard on that. There are about half of our communities that actually have the food mail service. But this program could apply to...

WHEREAS the Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories has set the goal of having a healthy and educated population and has agreed to work with families, communities and schools to improve the physical and mental well-being of our youth;

AND WHEREAS the Government of the Northwest Territories provides subsidies for goods and services that cost too much for ordinary northerners to realistically bear;

AND WHEREAS the increasing costs of living in the NWT make it more and more difficult for many northerners to provide the basic necessities for their families;

AND WHEREAS milk is an essential...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thanks for the comments on that. I realize that they are narrowly economic, but I think we have many more win-win situations we could find here.

My final question is on the Power Corporation. Would the Minister commit to leading this government and doing a comprehensive and thorough review of the Northwest Territories Power Corporation, their work on the energy front, the possibility of restructuring and so on, to address many of the fundamental issues that we hear so much about from our constituents?

Mr. Speaker, thank you to the Minister for those comments. I don’t want to detract from the Energy Priorities Framework, because I think there is some very good stuff here. I think the Minister has pointed at the home environment and buildings. There are some very good things happening there. But as he has pointed out, transportation is the biggest source of many of our problems with our cost of living. So I’m hoping that some real outside the box thinking can be done there, some fundamental solutions.

One of the things I found missing was the development of local expertise on implementing some...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’ve appreciated the considerable debate we’ve had on this project. I’ve been collecting points and am still equivocal on this, and I’ll be listening closely for the rest of the debate. I am convinced that there’s value in doing this building the way it’s proposed. The $39 million in premium that we’d save is substantial, and I’m very, very cognizant of the need for infrastructure dollars. This is almost $2 million a year. There’s so much that we could do with that money.

There’s also the vacancy issue and market study business. Again, I’m not convinced that 7 per cent or...

That is good to hear. Perhaps it would be the Minister of Public Works and Services…. I don’t know, but could I hear some better definition of “accelerated rate” than just leaving it completely open?