Kevin O'Reilly

Merci, Monsieur le President. I want to talk today about the future of renewable energy in the North Slave Region. The Northwest Territories Power Corporation recently cancelled the request for expressions of interest to introduce major renewable energy sources for the North Slave region. Yesterday, the Minister of Public Works and Services tabled the North Slave Resiliency Study in the House. That study basically recommends against investing in renewable energy. As we all know, the low precipitation in recent years has crippled the hydrogenerating capability of our Snare and Bluefish...

No thanks, Mr. Chair. That is good news. I appreciate the responses. Thanks.

Thanks for the answer. I will try to work with the department to continue to expand that network. The last question I had, Mr. Chair, is contract services: there is quite a large increase there from the previous year. What is that additional money going to be used for? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Yes. Thanks for that. There's another page in here for the Environment Fund, so we'll have another chance to look at that, but I appreciate the answer. You know, we don't want to develop a fund and keep running a big surplus in it. That's not the purpose of it, so I'm fine with this. I know, earlier today, the Minister made a statement about the Climate Change Strategic Framework, and I think I heard that we had a climate change strategy at one point. We also had a Greenhouse Gas Strategy 2011-2015, and that's winding down, and that there's now going to be an effort to bring together all of...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Mr. Thompson asked the question I was going to, so thank you.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker, and I appreciate the response from the Minister. But we've been talking about this for almost 10 years now, and we only really have midwifery services available in two communities. Can the Minister commit that he will fast track these consultations that he's talking about this summer, to bring forward final recommendations and an implementation plan as soon as possible? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

I appreciate the answer from the Minister and would like to try to help him try to find some money for that. Midwifery, because I've asked the Minister questions regarding cost savings, how they could be achieved by relying on community-based midwifery rather than pediatric care. His response was that boarding and travel costs have not been included in the analysis done to date. Boarding and travel costs seem to be some of the biggest costs for the current approach. Will the Minister consider these costs as part of the consultations to take place this year on expansion of midwifery services?

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to recognize a few other people in the gallery. We have Kelly and Todd Slack and the new addition to their family, Sam, probably one of the youngest people who has ever been in the gallery. David Wasylciw, who runs Open NWT, a valuable resource for political junkies. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thanks, Mr. Chair, and I'll save up some questions then for the Finance Minister then. These guys are off the hook for now. Thanks.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. My colleague's questions about contaminated sites made me just wonder: is this sort of like a program where ENR is responsible for cleaning up or remediating all contaminated sites that are GNWT responsibility or are those broken up by the department that may own the land or caused the contamination in the first place? Or what's that money actually used for? I understand that ENR does have some expertise in terms of assessing sites and developing policy and so on, but how is the remediation cost actually split up among various departments? Thanks, Mr. Chair.