Michael Miltenberger

As we sit through the political bavardage of my colleague, we can clearly see he’s on a fishing expedition. We, of course, pride ourselves on complying and having good audits, Aa1 credit rating, budgets passed unanimously in this House, public accounts that meet the test, and we are going to continue to hit those standards. Thank you.

We just had a successful audit. We are going to be tabling the public accounts in the next little bit, and we fully expect to be compliant as required.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to table the following three documents, entitled “Northwest Territories Species at Risk Committee Annual Report, 2013-2014;” “Conference of Management Authorities Species at Risk Annual Report, 2013-2014;” and “Northwest Territories Cumulative Impact Monitoring Program 2013-2014 Annual Report.”

We fully engage ourselves in complying with all the necessary regulations and requirements that govern us, or if we have any other kind of involvement with the senior government like the federal government, we will, of course, work to comply in those areas as well. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We are taking all the steps necessary along with all the other departments post-devolution to make sure that we comply with all the appropriate statutes, requirements, regulations and guidelines.

Of course, we are open to all alternative energy opportunities that are out there. I would point out that this project, two or three years ago, was projected to cost anywhere from $16 million to $20 million for 600 kilowatts, which is a very, very expensive price to pay. We had offered up a 25-year power purchase agreement. In addition to the cost to install, there were some very significant ongoing costs because of the high mineral content of the water. It would require ongoing scaling and potential drilling of additional holes and wells.

We would be more than willing to revisit this to see if...

Work was done towards a power purchase agreement with Borealis. It was realized that a power purchase contract would be quite complex and timely to negotiate. In order to facilitate Borealis’s discussion with financing partners like Husky Energy and one other large energy player, we gave them a term sheet which provided a 25-year contract at the marginal cost of diesel, committing customers to 25 years of diesel rates that was indexed to inflation of diesel. Borealis took this term sheet but was unable to find a partner to complete this $16 million dollar project. Our due diligence, through a...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That was what we thought was fairly plain English, but I’ll ask the deputy to provide further detail.

Mr. Speaker, it has been a challenging summer for the Northwest Territories Power Corporation. During this past summer the Taltson hydroelectric plant and the transmission lines between the Snare plants and Yellowknife were threatened by forest fires. Fortunately, all major infrastructure was preserved; however, these same fires were responsible for half of the power outages experienced on the Snare system.

The same drought conditions that contributed to this being one of the worst forest fires years in history is also responsible for low water on the Snare system. Water levels at Snare are at...

It reflects that fact that last year we had more capital projects on the go in Finance and this year we have dialed it back to the $210,000 that is here before the House for the two modules that we’ve talked about. I can also get the specifics of last year’s capital, if the Member wishes, and provide that to committee.