Jane Groenewegen

I appreciated the Premier and Minister Miltenberger’s comments yesterday that the cost of power is a complex issue that our government is committed to taking a measured and thorough approach to examining if there are ways to reduce the cost of power to consumers in the North. There are many discussions, analysis and inquiries to be made to that end fully considering the full impact of any potential changes.

In the meantime, I want to come clean about my interest in this topic. Firstly, I am an MLA for Hay River, the headquarters of NUL, NTPC and the PUB. While these discussions are taking place...

I will now rise and report progress.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Under the topic of extending people, we all know about the demographic bubble of the baby boomers and the people are aging, and we just heard a statistic this week that if people actually make it to pensionable age, the now anticipated age of people who are on a pension is like 89 for men and 91 for women. Anyway, we have got to address that demographic, that growing demographic of seniors who would stay in the Northwest Territories if there was a wider variety of options for them in terms of accommodation. Not just public housing but accommodation with caregivers that...

I’m sensing that some people on this side of House would like to help you out with that, and if they could see something in writing, perhaps we could make some valuable contributions to that initiative, to that strategy.

Now, on to the topic of keeping people. Seven hundred people left the Northwest Territories last year, but because of a high birthrate, that was offset to a larger extent.

Is there any way of tracking why people are leaving the Northwest Territories? I don’t know. I know you can’t do exit interviews, but is it possible there’s any way to find out why people are leaving? I mean...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to recognize Jackie Milne in the visitors gallery today. She is the promoter and achiever of many things in all things agricultural. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yesterday in the House the issues of the cost of living and the cost of power were raised. Twenty-five years ago I was honoured to be appointed to the first board of directors of the Northwest Territories Power Corporation. With the repatriation of what was a federal Crown corporation, the Northern Canada Power Commission, to its rightful place in the northern territories, one of the first orders of business was selecting a community for the headquarters office. Pine Point was closing down and the economic fallout from that for Hay River was going to be immense. After a...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today is February 4th, World Cancer Day. World Cancer Day originated in Paris in 2000 at the World Summit Against Cancer. Today organizations and health professionals around the world are taking this opportunity to raise awareness of cancer and encourage its prevention, detection and treatment.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I believe that we do have a rule in this House that speaks to attacking or making derogatory remarks about a person or an entity that is not in a position to defend themselves on the floor of this House, and I’ve heard Mr. Hawkins refer to a private company that’s been in the Northwest Territories for over 70 years as a private company. I’ve heard him refer to them as a southern company. I’ve heard him refer to them as having an insatiable appetite for profit, and profit hungry and things like this.

Now, I’m just saying that this company that he’s referring to is not...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I mentioned in my Member’s statement that Choice North Farms has a pilot project ready to go. ITI has been involved in supporting that.

To the specifics of assisting this organization now in moving forward, what can the Minister tell me that he can do to help identify a location and land for this, if not under agricultural then under industrial, something outside of the town limits. What can the Minister do to help us find that land and get this pilot project off the ground? Thank you.

That’s reassuring but, of course, it can’t come quickly enough, in my opinion.

As I said in my Member’s statement today, the lack of an agricultural policy is actually a barrier to a lot of… It is an impediment and a barrier to a lot of activity that could take place in the agricultural area, whether it’s about taxation or purple gas or licensing of farm equipment. There are so many different things that our government does not have any framework or policy or legislation on.

The big one is land. In order to undertake and become involved in agriculture, we need land.

I would like to ask the...