Bob McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My understanding is it goes back to the signing treaties. At the time treaties were signed, there was the oral version and the written version, and, from what I understand, the oral version is interpreted differently than the written version by a number of Aboriginal governments. That is possibly one of the reasons for the long time.

I think one of the benefits of ministerial special representatives is we ask them to outline and find out what some of the reasons for the delays, what are the challenges, what are the road blocks. I think, in my view, some of them have been...

The Taltson River has 18 megawatts of installed hydro capacity but has 200 megawatts of hydro potential which could be developed over the next decade. The Taltson Hydro Expansion combined with a southern transmission link, could provide a green energy corridor that would stabilize power costs in the North, displace coal generation in the South and remove economic barriers to remote resource development. The first phase, if we go down that route, would leverage past work to build a 60-megawatt hydro expansion within five years that would double the Northwest Territories hydro capacity and...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can assure the Member that as soon as we have a project where we have a customer and where we have secured federal funding and support, we will be out there consulting. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

May 2017, that is two months away. I expect that by then we should have the ministerial special reports, we should have identified a path forward with the Government of Canada, and I think that we will be able to engage our colleagues on the Cabinet committee and the joint committee and hopefully find a way to work with the Aboriginal governments on the negotiations.

That is something that the federal government has indicated that, with devolution, we should be at the table, and that we have programs and services, and we have responsibilities as a public Government of the Northwest Territories.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First of all, we do not want to raise false expectations. We do not want to suggest that there is a project, when there is no project. Like I said, I can reassure the Member that as soon as we get an indication of federal support, and as soon as we have a power customer, we will be very pleased to consult. We have a duty to consult, which is a legal requirement.

We've been down this road before. Previously we spent $13 million in the hopes of finding a customer. That project did not materialize and we do not intend to go forward without a customer or without an indication of federal support.

The government services officers and the three pilot Service Canada communities are recording all of their contacts, so after 12 months, we will sit down and evaluate all of the requests for the six program areas, and we will determine where we go, whether we go forward or not.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The government services officers record all service contacts they have with community members, and we are closely monitoring the number of service requests in each of the pilot Service Canada partnership communities. We are not expecting a large increase because, prior to this arrangement, most of the GSOs were handling a lot of Service Canada requests, and I believe the smaller communities average about five requests in any work day. If we do notice an increase in workload, we are prepared to look at extending our service hours. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. To me, it looks like a circular motion. It will just keep us going around in circles, so I would not support it. Thank you, Mr. Chair.