Bob McLeod

Mr. Speaker, it is unfortunate that the Member suggests that we are irrational, especially since all of those expenditures were approved by this House. Nevertheless, we spent a significant amount of money to look at solar, geothermal, biomass, all of those alternatives, and we have, through the Public Utilities Board, worked with the Northwest Territories Power Corporation to establish a process for net metering. We are quite prepared to go down that road. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m very pleased to recognize today in the gallery Lorraine Phaneuf, the executive director for the Status of Women Council; and Gail Cyr, special advisor to the Minister responsible for the Status of Women.

I’d also like to recognize Gaetan Caron, chair of the National Energy Board; Susan Bedouin, leader of paralegal service of the National Energy Board; and, of course, David Hamilton, member of the National Energy Board.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s actually quite a simplistic number. We expect that the revenues from devolution alone would be about $60 million a year. There’s 365 days in a year. If you do the math it works out to $165,000 a day. That’s not including all the money for the employees and the O and M and so on that would also be devolved.

As the Member may recall, we have been identified as a stakeholder and we were lumped in with all of the stakeholders when the federal government sought input. When we first came in as a government, the Premier and Cabinet, we were advised that we had to wait until letters went to Aboriginal governments before our government could find out the nature of these proposed recommendations. We have since met with Mr. Pollard and we have been asked to provide a written response to the recommendations, and that we would be part of the debriefing when the federal government debriefs the Aboriginal...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Government of Canada is responsible for making those decisions and we would want to make sure that those decisions do not affect our devolution negotiations. Thank you.

I guess the federal government is trying to provide some certainty to industry and to level the playing field with other northern territories. Once again, I reiterate that this gives more credence to getting on with devolution so that we can make these changes that will benefit all of the people of the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I guess, in our view, this demonstrates the fact that we need to move fairly quickly with devolution so that we can have decisions made by the people that are affected by those decisions. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ll redirect the question to the Minister of the NWT Housing Corporation.

Recognizing that the government contribution to Betty House is only a small portion, we would be prepared to entertain something on a similar basis percentage wise, I’m sure.

I have the dec from December 2011 right here and we’ll dig out the information from 2010 as well.