Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Mr. Chair. What we have before us today was we have a very modest capital budget of $210,000. Last year it was higher, but I’ll ask the deputy if he can speak to that in a little more detail. I can provide the detail for committee about the discrepancy from the actuals, the capital estimate to the revised estimates, but I don’t have that detail here with me.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate the Member’s comments in his closing statement about working to serve the residents the best we can. As we sit here today with our capital budget, we are of course making the case that SAM cash management module and the SAM strategic sourcing and supplier contract management module will in fact help us do a better job at our part of managing the affairs of the government. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. We’ve initiated discussions through the initiative of trying to increase the population by 2,000 in the next five years with industry, the mines, in particular the Chamber of Mines plus the Chamber of Commerce, to look at how we minimize the fly-in/fly-out population and look at what opportunities are there as they come up with an expedited immigrant application process, which is going to come into play here in the new year.

We’ve also done a lot of work internally as a department to move to fill our very new vacancies we have both inside and outside of Yellowknife. We...

Yes, Madam Chair.

At this point, not that I’m aware of.

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.