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.

With the myriad of programs and services that we deliver, generally we take into account a number of different features. For example, population is a very important component of any program delivery. For example, Education, they tried to tie their funding to the number of students, parent/student ratios. The Department of Health has a compendium of care, and depending on the population, if we have very small communities we can’t always have a nurse in every community. Some programs are tied to each other. Generally we don’t send nurses where there are no RCMP officers. Those kinds of things.

We...

Mr. Speaker, as the Member knows, we always listen to suggestions from the other side, and we are able to do so again. I just need to know what it is that you are proposing. We can’t manage through press releases, so we would need something more definitive. The Member knows the process. We don’t respond to a single MLA. I think we would need a request from the committee. Obviously, if the committee requests us to seek this from the federal government and the committee supports it, we will do it. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My understanding is there are quite a number of options that are out there. The option that is being pursued now is seen as the best, most immediate option. There are bacteria that eat arsenic that have been used in other processes to recover a mine. There are also some other approaches that are more expensive such as finding a way to get rid of the arsenic. One of the recommendations was to haul it away. So there are a number of options, but the option that is being pursued now that is being undertaken is the most immediate and will have the best way to control the...

Thank you. Very pleased with the support, and we see this hydro development and the transmission line as probably the biggest project that we can start in the next two years, or in the remaining life of this 17th Assembly. Thank you.

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.