Michael Miltenberger

Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Tu Nedhe, that Bill 35, Supplementary Appropriation Act (Operations Expenditures), No. 2, 2014-2015, be read for the second time.

This bill makes supplementary appropriations for operations expenditures for the Government of the Northwest Territories for 2014-2015 fiscal year.

I can talk to the Power Corporation. I can’t speak to the NUL, which, as well, is a distributor. I know we work hard to keep the price of energy as low as we can. As we move forward, as I’ve pointed out publicly, we’ve subsidized the Power Corporation over the last three years directly over $50 million to soften the blow and protect rates because of the increasing diesel costs, the fact that we haven’t raised diesel prices for five years to help offset the low water here in the Snare system. We have moved past the point of where it’s strictly a for-profit, you have to live off your revenues...

Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Yellowknife South, that Bill 39, Supplementary Appropriation Act (Infrastructure Expenditures), No. 4, 2014-2015, be read for the first time.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The underlying concern, of course, in some quarters, is that the Power Corporation has no interest in encouraging people to reduce and conserve because they are profit driven and they have to survive on their revenues. In fact, if that was the case, it no longer is. As we will see over the course of the next few days, there is going to be discussion about the Power Corporation, our Crown corporation of which we are the one shareholder, of how it can better be a vehicle for the energy policy of the Government of the Northwest Territories and the people of the Northwest...

Mr. Speaker, I moved, seconded by the honourable Member for Tu Nedhe, that Bill 35, Supplementary Appropriation Act (Operations Expenditures), No. 2, 2014-2015, be read for the first time.

I would like to point out that one of our areas of interest where we’ve invested a considerable amount of money has, in fact, been on development of our solar strategy and the solar arrays that we’ve put into Simpson, one of the largest in the country up to the point that it was built, and the pilot project that we’re working on in Colville Lake, where we’re putting in a significant amount of solar power with batteries to look at how much we can maximize penetration into that service system so that we can minimize the cost and reliance on diesel. Now, as the technology has improved, and I’ve...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Out of the first charrette came the direction to look at the issue of the distribution and the transmission grid build-out where we could hook up the Snare system and the Taltson system and investigate the cost of an intertie to Saskatchewan where we could potentially move cheaper power from places like Manitoba and north. We did that. It came back in at about $1.2 billion, probably more than double what we had initially estimated. Rather than keep pursuing that or not do anything, we have recognized the need to change our focus to generation, and not just small...

We work with communities on a community-by-community project basis at this point. Where there is an interest, for example, in the Member’s community of McPherson there has been waste heat work done. We have been studying the viability of using fast growing willows as a source of biomass in addition to all the other standard programs of general applications that are there for all businesses and individuals to apply for. We’re also, of course, very interested in working with communities as they do their own energy plans, to see what long-term planning needs to be done to ensure things are...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Yellowknife South, that Bill 40, Appropriation Act (Infrastructure Expenditures), 2015-2016, be read for the third time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We’d be happy to sit down with committee if there are concerns by committee on the process going forward. We’d be happy to have those discussions to make sure it is as fulsome, integrated and engaged as possible as befits consensus government. Thank you.