Bob McLeod

Thank you. The Member recognizes that there’s an election between now and June of 2016, but as a matter of course, we want to make sure that these types of conferences are successful. They provide for a lot of development and bringing investment into the community. By all means, we would do whatever we could to support it so it would be successful. Thank you.

Thank you. You can rest assured that any project, if it were ever to come to fruition, would have to go through a very rigorous regulatory process that we have in the Northwest Territories, that would identify issues or conditions that would have to be approved. We’re very interested in moving to the next step to determine the economics of such a possibility and whether it is not only technically feasible or technically possible but that it’s economically feasible. So that’s where we’re looking to move to, is move on to the next step. Thank you.

What we’ve been discussing is the need for an energy cooperation agreement. There are significant numbers of transboundary issues involved with energy. Not only energy, but water, transportation, tourism, medical health care, what have you, and in almost every instance we are very intertwined with Alberta.

When it comes to energy specifically, we are all part of the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin, and I don’t know if you need another history lesson in that regard or not, but we have very similar issues when it comes to developing our stranded resources. If we don’t have transportation routes...

I guess you will just have to wait for tonight where we address that front and centre in both my remarks and in the Minister of ENR’s remarks. Certainly, we recognize that subsidizing is not sustainable, and at some point, very soon if not now, we have to have a very sustainable method of providing electricity going forward. Thank you.

Over the past two assemblies, the role of NTPC has evolved. We now have the Ministerial Energy Coordination Committee, where all of the Ministers and departments that have responsibilities in this area come together, and the Power Corporation is working much more closely with the government to fulfill the objectives of the government, and certainly we are recognizing that one size fits all is not necessarily the way to go. We are looking to the Energy Charrette to point us in the right direction. Thank you.

I believe the mayor of Inuvik is part of the Energy Charrette, and by all means, the outcomes of the Energy Charrette will be in the public domain. So, they certainly will be available to the organizers of the Inuvik Arctic Energy and Alternative Technologies Show. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ve had no discussions with anybody about this conference, other than the Member e-mailing me a press release advising of this change. I expect that in due course the money, or some portion of the money that we contributed for the oil and gas conference would probably be earmarked for a similar conference in 2016. Thank you.

I wouldn’t say we’ve been working behind the scenes. I think we’ve been very open and transparent about it. We’ve been working with Alberta. Alberta recently released a report that indicated it was technically feasible to go north, to ship oil through what some people are calling an Arctic gateway, that it’s technically feasible, and we would like to explore that much further.

The Mackenzie Gas Pipeline Project that was reviewed and was approved through the regulatory process and a certificate of public conveyance and necessity was approved, which would provide for one-third Aboriginal...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. NWT and Alberta has a very long, collaborative history. As a matter of fact, Alberta and Saskatchewan were carved out of the Northwest Territories in 1905. We have had an MOU on cooperation and development with Alberta for about 18 years and it’s been renewed twice and recently expired in 2013. We have been having discussions on entering into a new, renewed MOU. A lot of our discussions are on energy. I believe that at the start of this session, when we all met as Caucus, that was something that we all agreed, was we had to do some work in this area. Thank you, Mr...

Having trained educators or trained people working with these children is very important to us and we have been taking steps in that regard already. Through the review, we will further work to improve in this area. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.