Jane Groenewegen

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister kind of already went into the last part of my question. That would be the collaboration, cooperation with ITI so that when the information is available about the availability of the biomass of the product of the harvest and the sustainability of that, which would be under the Minister of ENR’s purview, then to work with ITI to look at the viability from the economic side, the size of the market, what we’d have to sell the product for in order to make it competitive with importing it from other jurisdictions and all those sorts of things. Perhaps the...

Being from Hay River where we have had a functioning, operating sawmill for many, many years, one of the problems we know that was often encountered, an obstacle that made it difficult to keep enough product coming in and harvested to keep that sawmill going was the whole issue of access because of unresolved land use plans, unresolved land claims, that a lot of this material would need to be harvested is in areas where claims are not settled and there was often opposition raised to harvesting the product. What has the Minister done or researched to assure himself that access issues would not...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I would like to talk about the viability of a pellet mill in the Northwest Territories to manufacture pellets for wood-burning stoves and boilers.

Mr. Speaker, we have the trees. We have the sustainable inventory of trees. We have an increasing demand for pellets. We started off with a lot of residential pellet stoves and it was at that time somewhat more practical to bring in bags of pellets to have them imported from Alberta and British Columbia. But, Mr. Speaker, as we all know, this government has undertaken numerous initiatives to convert buildings owned by...

Thank you. I wasn’t going to speak to this, but I need to jump in here.

I understand the rationale of the questioning of my colleagues; however, Fort Smith and Hay River, first of all, are not right next door to each other. They may both be in the South Slave, but we’re really stretching it to say an hour and a half. You’d have to be driving about 150 miles an hour to get there in an hour and a half.

As far as being back up or taking pressure off of Stanton, it’s a flight of about 30 minutes to get between Hay River and Yellowknife and it’s probably a flight of about 50 minutes between Fort...

I am glad to hear that the government is looking for ways to create partnerships and secure buy-in from different governments from different areas of the South Slave.

Mr. Speaker, is the government looking for a proponent so that such an operation would be honed and managed and operated by a private enterprise, or is the government thinking about getting into the pellet manufacturing business themselves? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I said in my Member’s statement today, I want to talk about viability of a pellet mill for the Northwest Territories, and my questions will be directed to the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources.

Mr. Speaker, a certain amount of the viability of a pellet mill would depend on the sustainable availability of product to harvest to bring to make pellets with. I would like to ask the Minister if he could update this House on what is being done within his department to determine that there are sufficient inventories to make a project such as this viable within our...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to recognize my constituent, Mrs. Davida Delorey, the closest thing to the first lady of the Northwest Territories. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I believe that this is Foster Family Awareness Week and I would like to use my Member’s statement today to recognize foster families in the Northwest Territories.

Ideally every child would be raised in their own home by their own parent or parents in a safe, secure and nurturing environment, but, Mr. Speaker, we know that circumstances in life do not always allow that to happen. In those situations, Mr. Speaker, it’s very important that we have parents and families that will come forward and take children into their home and treat them and raise them as if they are their...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We would like to proceed with the consideration of the capital for Municipal and Community Affairs, then move on to the Department of Justice. Time permitting, we would also like to go to Human Resources today. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The concern I had raised to me by a constituent was someone who had entered into a certain government department at an associate deputy position. Is it the position of this government that skills at the deputy minister/associate deputy minister level are transferable between departments without any really specific experience or having worked their way up in the ranks in that particular discipline or area of program delivery? Thank you.