Bob McLeod

Thank you. I think our thinking is becoming very clear. We are going to focus on expansion of transmission lines. Also, we feel we need the benefit of some of the businesspeople in the Northwest Territories, some of the people that have been around, very experienced businesspeople that we can work with and that can give us some advice on innovative ways to be able to finance and develop the hydro potential.

Also, when we talked to the Prime Minister he didn’t say no, which we thought was a very good response, but he did indicate that we needed to have a very clear business case and also that we...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to recognize and welcome the Deputy Consul-General, Mr. Zengfeng Wan; and Economic Commercial Consul, Mr. Lei Jianzhong, both from the Consulate-General of the People’s Republic of China in Calgary. We continue to welcome China’s interest in our territory and look forward to a positive and prosperous relationship for both our peoples. Enjoy the rest of your stay in Yellowknife, and best wishes to the Chinese community here in the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

For example, in education we have the same level of curriculum for all of the communities. Again, it’s affected by population and the number of students. With health, we have a similar level of care. The health boards provide for health professionals to travel to communities on a regular basis in how they deal with health care. There are also certain standards in terms of placement of nurses and other health professionals.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As a government we live in a very large territory and there are a lot of regional, geographical and environmental differences. We try to maintain standards so that we have some consistent delivery of programs, but we recognize that not every region is going to be exactly the same. We try to maintain certain standards and we try to deliver the same level of programs and services, but it’s not always achievable.

Mr. Speaker, obviously if we could wave a magic wand and fix the problem tomorrow, we would be very interested in doing that. I think in order to go and approach the AANDC Minister, I think you have to be very clear on what the Member is asking for. Are we talking about only new innovative methods that are not already out there? Are we talking about somebody bringing a truckload of arsenic-eating bacteria, would we give them $20 million? Is that what the Member is suggesting? I’m not very clear on what the Member is asking us to do. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don’t know if Churchill was thinking of Giant Mine when he made that famous quotation. Perhaps a Yogi Berra quote of “it ain’t over ‘til it’s over” would be more appropriate.

We’ve been part of the Giant Mine process for some time. We see this as the most immediate response and step to deal with the problem. I’m not sure what the Member is suggesting, whether he’s suggesting we should stop everything and wait until somebody comes up with an innovative idea before we do anything more. As a government, we see the best approach right now is to deal with the immediate...

Thank you. I think the Member hit it right on the head. In the past whenever we wanted to develop our hydro resources, the companies that we were talking to always wanted us to take all of the risk and then they would take most of the power. I think that with the plan that we’re developing, we need to find a way to transport the power first. We want to bring the power to where the development will be happening so that we can promote development.

There’s a potential for nine new mines in the Northwest Territories by 2020 and invariably every one of them wants cheaper power. We’re also talking...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We are obviously very much looking forward to devolution, because as we’ve said many times, it will bring control and decision-making into our hands. Obviously, energy and our hydro development are first and foremost in our minds. We’ve been working very hard in putting together our Energy Plan, and also our NWT Power Corporation is working on a Hydro Development Strategy that we hope to be rolling out very soon.

When the Prime Minister was in Hay River I talked to him very specifically about hydro development and about the fact that even with devolution we still will be...

Mr. Speaker, I would like to welcome my colleagues back to the continuation of the Fourth Session of the 17th Legislative Assembly. It is good to be getting back to work. We have an ambitious agenda, Mr. Speaker, and a lot left to accomplish as a territory and as a government, so I hope my colleagues are feeling well-rested.

The Fourth Session began on February 6, 2013. During the winter and spring sittings of this session, Members considered and passed 13 bills contributing to the good government and administration of the Northwest Territories. This included the 2013-14 budget, which was...

I think we all aspire to that. We are obviously limited by the level of resources. We try to do the best we can for every community. I should point out that in our capital needs assessment, Colville Lake has been identified in there, that there will be some planning studies that will be done to make sure that the needs of Colville Lake are eventually addressed. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.