Floyd Roland

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I and Members on this side of the House follow the process of the House. At times, yes, we may stray, and that’s when Members call us into line. We respect the roles of Regular Members, of Cabinet of how we do our work. Some Members have been in this Assembly for a multiple number of terms. Mrs. Groenewegen is one of them. She is very adept at presenting a case and leading a line of questioning, as I’ve come to know her work in this Assembly.

But most important to the process, as we do our work as Members of the Legislative Assembly, a number of times we fill different...

Mr. Speaker, the Building Canada Fund process is in the system with the Minister responsible for the infrastructure department, Minister Michael McLeod. He committed, through the process, to continue to do this work. I can’t say if we’ll have something absolutely in place by December. The next number of meetings that need to occur between the Department of Transportation and the community are going to be the critical ones to look at how they would proceed on the preliminary engineering and scope of project and at that point decide how they would fund that.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The motions of this House do carry weight. We review our options on an annual basis and weigh out, with the funding available, what projects can proceed.

On a specific gravel source to Aklavik, the Member raised this issue with me, as well, in the last session. I sat down with the Ministers on our side and committed them to work with the Member in the community. I understand the appropriate Ministers went into Aklavik this summer, had a meeting, and there were ongoing discussions there. There was a commitment to look at, as the Member pointed out, through the Building...

Mr. Speaker, the department is going to work with the community. They’re talking about trying to come up with the funds through the research and development portion of the Building Canada Fund, and that work will be ongoing.

As for me committing to taking a project and putting it into the plan, we know that we work with Members of the Assembly through the business plan process, and I wouldn’t say that I personally or as Premier could put a project in there without proper consultation.

I think this work we talked about is going to help us prepare for the next stage, and that is research...

I am aware that the department is working with the community. I understand, in fact, that a meeting will be held in the community next week, I believe on the 15th of October, to have further discussion in this area. At that point, they’ll have to decide how they can move this further ahead.

Mr. Speaker, I think the fact that some of our debate in this House is about having the proper consultation, and the approach we use, and the change we need to see here in the Northwest Territories…. An example of some of that change is that earlier today Minister Bob McLeod announced the SEED policy, the program coming into effect helping small businesses in our communities.

It’s that type of approach that we see happening, yet we realize we still have some traditional economies out there that we need to continue to support, like the trapping program and trying to get back into, for example...

Mr. Speaker, as the Member has put it so well, it is hard to disagree with a statement or a question that’s…. We want the system to work better. We agree as we look at the global environment and the economy that there is a need for change. We have to look at that ourselves, as the Government of Northwest Territories, in our approach. The issue will be: how can we start that shift happening? I think we’re starting to do some of that.

For example, in the upcoming business plans we are going to be looking from the energy side trying to expand the way we deliver energy in the Northwest Territories...

Mr. Speaker, because of the direct relationship with the Chair of the NWT Power Corporation board and the fact that we are the sole shareholder, any information that is being put forward when there are incidents of outages and so on include quite a number of things that I get updated on regularly as we progress forward.

The other initiative ongoing, long term, for example, is the hydro development that we’re looking at doing. As highlighted by Minister Bob McLeod earlier, there are a number of initiatives we’re jointly working on in trying to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels in the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Through the Ministerial Energy Coordinating Committee, the Power Corporation, along with myself and a number of other Ministers, is looking at a number of initiatives that can help with individuals here in the Northwest Territories. We’re bringing that paper forward to Members for consideration. Within the Power Corporation itself we have to, as would be done any time we go before the PUB for a general rate application for rate riders, prove up the numbers, as they say. So there are a number of initiatives that are undertaken.

I’ll commit to get more details for the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’d be prepared to try and see what we can do to get this information out to all the students in the Northwest Territories. We ourselves are undertaking a number of initiatives to get on top of the water situation, more so than we have in the past, through partnerships with provinces in western Canada as well as re-energizing the Mackenzie River Basin Board that was put into place a number of years ago. So we’d look at opportunities along with the Department of Education, Culture and Employment to see what we can do in this area.