Robert C. McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have 240 public housing units in Inuvik and all 240 of them are all on natural gas or SNG. That would include the boilers and the hot water heaters. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I know, through the LHO, they put out a newsletter every so often. I have been advised that they are going to put a campaign in there as to the consumption of gas. However, that is a hard one to regulate, to tell people that they need to reduce their consumption. I think they all realize, especially those in the private homes. They’re probably all turning their thermostats down a bit to conserve.

As I’ve seen and as the Member is aware, we were dealing with a situation where a senior who owned their own home went from $700 a month to $1,400 a month and they’ve taken every step they...

Mr. Speaker, I do know that for the month of January of 2012 the local housing authority spent approximately $84,000 for natural gas. A year later, January 2013, that cost went up to $181,000 and that is just for the month of January, and you multiply that over 12 months, we spent over $1 million. I think it is $572,000 more than we would normally spend because of the conversion to SNG. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I will say yes with an explanation. I will commit to having our staff go into the communities, upon invitation from the community, to start discussing some of their options and start discussing how the O and M may be affected if they do get a water treatment plant. We will, again, upon invitation, go into these communities and start the discussion with them.

We would work with the community to find other sources of water, be it bringing in water from another community, but again, my understanding is they do have a contract with the deliveryman who buys his water from the community of Hay River. But we would work closely with the community, and I think there have been some preliminary discussions as to one of the communities possibly looking at acquiring their own water treatment plant.

Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following two documents, entitled Government of the Northwest Territories Response to Motion 6-17(4), Gasoline Pricing Regulations; and Government of the Northwest Territories Response to Motion 10-17(4), Ground Ambulance and Highway Rescue Services. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Since the gas tax and the community infrastructure money were introduced a few years ago, a lot of the communities have built their own water treatment plant. There have been a few communities that have teamed up and did a bundled water treatment plant where, with economies of scale, they would get it a little cheaper. But we have money that’s allocated for this particular type of initiative. It’s $28 million that we divide amongst the communities across the Northwest Territories, and then they determine that a water treatment plant is a priority, and they do have the tools in place to make it...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My understanding is that the communities have a contract with the water service deliveryman, and as far as I know, that contract is still in place. He, in turn, would get his water from the community of Hay River. As far as I know, the contract, unless things have changed, is still in place.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to thank Mr. McLeod for bringing this motion forward. I want to thank Mrs. Groenewegen for seconding it. I want to thank the devolution crew for all your good work on this. As always, we task you with doing something, we make political decisions and then you’re left to put it into a document and you did a fantastic job.

During the course of our political careers, we run into many highlights and I’ve heard a couple pointed out. One was the division in 1999, and I’ve been fortunate and I’ve had a few highlights so far. One of my major highlights, I think, was being...

I will commit to the Member that we will have our officials meet with the leadership in Nahanni Butte to identify some of the work that still needs to happen. As well, the other departments. I know DOT is doing some work on their portion of it. I will make that commitment to the Member that we will get our officials in there to work with the leadership. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.