Bob McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I’d like to take this opportunity to recognize an extraordinary constituent. In the past, she has received the Queen’s Jubilee Commemorative Medal for her tireless work on breast cancer awareness and health. I am speaking about Ruby Trudel, who is still very active on community issues.

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In March 2008 she attended a homelessness forum where various representatives expressed their difficulty in keeping up with increased costs, including food, which were eroding their grant funding. In her desire to help, she focused on providing food for the needy. She...

As part of our planning, there’s been some considerable research done into the Biomass Strategy and part of that is looking at what would entail having a feasible and sustainable industry. That information is available to all communities.

This is an area that government would really like to see developed. We would like to see pilot projects established, particularly in the area of wood pellets. But I think that my colleague the Minister of ENR, as members of the Ministerial Energy Coordinating Committee, we would certainly like to see that developed. As I said, part of our problem has been the difficulty in accessing forest resources. With our business programs and the Biomass Strategy funding, I’m sure that this is a good way to go forward.

Certainly, Mr. Speaker, I’ll endeavour to do that. Certainly we don’t want employees reporting on things that we have no interest or no need to be involved with.

I wouldn’t want to focus on just one possibility because we are asking the panel to look at all possibilities and whatever the panel comes back with, there will be opportunity for good discussion before any final decisions are made. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is asking me to put forward some hypothetical situations and we’ve just set up a panel to go out and ask people those very questions, so I’d wait until we have a report before I speculate on the possibilities of changing rates. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I don’t agree with the Member. We worked with the standing committees. We agreed on a discussion paper. We agreed on the types of questions to be asked. There was ample opportunity for input at the front end and it’s not very helpful to come back at the back end when we’re going out to consultation. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have worked very closely with the standing committees and we have come forward with a number of papers. We have come forward with a discussion paper that will be taken to the communities. We have also developed a communications plan and approach. They have laid out the questions and the areas of interest that they will be consulting on and we expect a report in June. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Member can be assured that we are working very closely with the NWT Association of Communities and we are funding the NWT Association of Communities so that all of the communities participate in a workshop that will be happening at the end of this month, March 30 and 31. As well, we are working very closely with the chambers of commerce and we will be talking about this review when they have the annual general meetings. All of the communities will be participating. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the Member knows, we’ve spent a considerable amount of time with the standing committees to ensure that we got the right questions out there and also we prepared a number of discussion papers. We’ve laid out a very ambitious communications strategy and it’s our intention to go into a number of communities and make sure all of these meetings are well advertised and that we get as many people out as possible. We do have a committee panel that’s been established and we will be counting on the panel to respond as to what they hear through their consultations. Thank you...