Louis Sebert

Yes, Mr. Speaker. The Power Corporation is involved in the development of an energy plan which has been spoken of several times in this House, so we are committed in the Power Corporation to, as I say, look at new ways of providing power, keeping in mind our vision of supplying power to communities at the cheapest, affordable and safest rate. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, the reason that the solar projects are capped at 20 per cent is that the diesel needs to run at the other 80 per cent. If they run more intermittently as I understand it, they become more unstable.

Mr. Speaker, as is well-known, the franchise in Hay River came to an end and the Town of Hay River, on its own, decided that it should seek bidders for the franchise. One of the bidders was of course the Power Corporation itself. I think there were actually two other bidders. The town accepted our bid, and our sole goal of this was to provide power at a lower rate to the citizens of Hay River. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I will promise to this House to talk about positive things.

Yes, certainly, Mr. Speaker, we are looking at these projects. All of these projects involve great complexity. It's not as though we've completed any of these mega projects. So I would expect as time goes on that we will have talks with Saskatchewan or perhaps other governments with a view to exporting power which is really the only way to reduce costs.

Mr. Speaker, I understand actually in Fort Simpson there is a solar panel system at the airport, which, admittedly it's quite small. I can't commit to entering into another pilot project at this time but I know we are considering how we can reduce the costs of power in all communities, and certainly we do want to get away from diesel.

Mr. Speaker, I believe that the energy strategy that they have looked at in the past is generic, as referred to by Member opposite and we will be willing to, of course, work with the smaller communities, but the overall policy, as is true of most policies, tends to be territorial-wide.

Mr. Speaker, that is an excellent question and --

---Laughter

-- logic would tell me that we would have to have a cap on 20 per cent on non-traditional sources of power, because the whole point of limiting it to 20 per cent was to allow there to be efficiency within the diesel system. So I imagine that 20 per cent cap would apply to all non-diesel sources of power.

Yes, certainly, Mr. Speaker, as the Energy Strategy rolls out we'll certainly be looking at options. As I said, the 20 per cent figure is just to ensure reliability in the system. As mentioned, you can go above that but it becomes incredibly expensive and involves very substantial subsidies. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, this is all tied, of course, to the strategy to which groups will be invited to participate including NUL. So we're hoping to get a broad discussion about where the Power Corporation is going. Certainly, we are looking at more inventive ways and cheaper ways and more energy-efficient ways of delivering power to the Northwest Territories. That remains our goal.