Floyd Roland

Mr. Speaker, any changes that we would make would have to include the legislative initiative and changes that we would have to bring forward. That process is well established. We would have to follow through that and go forward. In fact, Mr. Speaker, when the ATCO proposal came out, I was asked by aboriginal leadership, why not aboriginal corporations get involved in this, that day one they showed interest in becoming a partner or parts of the Power Corporation. At that time I said we are not interested in taking parts of the Power Corporation, but we are interested in having discussions...

There are templates across the country that are similar when you look at our size. The one closest to us, of course, is Nunavut. As the Member pointed out in her Member’s statement, when division occurred, we took a stance. At the time, the government-of-the-day took a stance where it was focused on the business entity, as arm’s length as possible. The Nunavut government has taken a different approach and we’d have to look at that model to see if it’s worked in that location. I know they’ve been pressed with their issues around the cost of energy as well. But through this energy rate review...

Mr. Speaker, of course everyone is familiar with the ATCO proposal that we received that we have had some very high level permanent discussions to see if, in fact, it was a starting position or not. That is the one that is sitting there right now. There hasn’t been a whole lot of work done on that piece. The last set of discussions Mr. Miltenberger was involved with was around the interest that a potential partner might have in expanding our hydro system here in the Northwest Territories. There have not been active discussions on the actual partnership. There have been discussions about what...

Mr. Speaker, that sounds like what we pretty well had in place under strategic initiatives and having Members be a part of that process. That avenue is still open to Members, if they want to get engaged at that level. It’s still open to them now. If you want real action, not another discussion, not another consultation process, that action can come to this House. In fact, a response directly to the energy rate review regulations piece of work. If we’re going to make fundamental change to the Northwest Territories, for the whole Northwest Territories big picture, make a difference as early as...

Mr. Speaker, I think there are a couple of avenues. One, first of all, I would agree with the Member about our staff complement out there delivering the power that residents use today and in the future. They are very dedicated and keep on trying to provide the best service in a challenging environment. In fact, I think the record shows on outages and so on that we actually rank very well compared to some of the jurisdictions.

The issue of where this might be able to go, again I think there are a couple of avenues, as we talked with Members around our response to the energy rate regulation piece...

Mr. Speaker, in the area of our Strategic Initiatives committees, we’ve been focusing on areas where we know we can get results sooner, and that is where the programs we’re directly involved with, the way we’ve designed them, the way we implement them and those issues. We’ve also worked with the federal government on a stimulus package to help offset some of those costs so we can get some of those projects in place that would help stabilize or lower the cost of living in our communities. We’ve also put in place the $60 million in alternative energies, again, to put in place, to stabilize our...

Mr. Speaker, I go back to the earlier Member’s statement that Mrs. Groenewegen had made earlier about when the Power Corp first came in, it used to be the Northern Canada Power Corporation. Then we took it over, our specific area within the Northwest Territories. At that time, the legislation was adopted and put in place and, in a sense, kept it at its level of a corporate structure. Since then there’s been little change, in fact, over the 22 years around that corporate structure. That is probably one of the things that would have to be looked at if we were to do any work in that area. Thank...

Here would be a great opportunity to use that phrase “in the fullness of time.” But, realistically, the fact is that the work has been started at least initially from Executive touching base with departments. Now, with this package, we’ll be able to put a little bit more to it and ask the departments responsible to start putting some energy into this. I will get back to Members after speaking with my Cabinet colleagues as to some time frames. I’ll be pushing them to have a quicker response than the normal and, hopefully, we can get some response back within a month or two with Members to...

Mr. Speaker, we’d have to undertake a very in-depth process to look at are there potential efficiencies there. I believe the report that we can have discussion on with Members will highlight the comparisons of the Power Corporation with other jurisdictions of similar size and design in the sense of diesel and hydro, some of the mix for going forward. Again, nothing stops this Assembly from taking on initiatives, whether they’re addressed in those reports or not. But simply, the fact is, let’s look at some of those things.

The Member just stated that there are some fixed things and unless we...

It is early days and I would say that once we start to gather and the initial work has been done and touching base with departments with this package of information we’ll be able to get the departments to pull something together and prepare to come to Members to say how do we engage the collective in the sense of the body of people and organizations with expertise along with our own. We are a ways away. We need to pull the initial pieces together and go to Members and seek their advice and what are sort of the next steps we can look at taking.