Ronald Bonnetrouge

Mahsi, Madam Chair. What I notice in the main estimates is that the Arctic Energy Alliance is getting $1.6 million, and biomass energy is only getting $200,000. From what I am hearing and everything, we are getting pretty heavy on getting away from lowering our greenhouse gas emissions overall. It's not going to come overnight, but there were plans to bring those levels down overall. We spend a considerable amount of resources, lots of money, on fuels, whether it be diesel fuels or liquid natural gas, propane.

In the future, it looks like we are looking at biomass, whether it be wood pellets...

Good Lord, did I just waste my breath? Mahsi.

Mahsi, Madam Chair. I just want to touch up on under facilities management. In the small communities, I know the outlying communities, like in Fort Providence and Fort Resolution, they have settlement maintainers. I know it's costing the department quite a bit of money every time one of heating boilers or whatever goes down in either Fort Resolution or Fort Providence. The operating engineers have to come from Hay River, and we don't know if they will come all hours of the night most times. I had brought this up when I was an employee in Infrastructure, but it has not gotten anywhere.

However...

Mahsi, Madam Chair. Contract services, that's not for any specialized services or anything, is it? What type of contract work does this entail? I think you may have answered that before; I'm not sure.

Mahsi, Madam Chair. Most of your contracts for all those services, are they contractors based in the NWT, northern contractors? Mahsi.

Mahsi, Madam Chair. Mahsi for that answer. You are mentioning that it's electrical, boiler, gas, and electrical. That sounds very familiar because we do have those safety services within the GNWT, whether it's under Infrastructure. Are these the people who you are actually using who are within government? Mahsi.

Mahsi, Madam Chair. You mentioned maintenance in there. Can you tell me what you mean by maintenance in there? Mahsi.

Mahsi, Madam Chair. I am just wondering because I know you are just listing what you currently have. I am looking for a research and development section of everything so that we look at biomass seriously. It should be a separate report saying, "Hey. This is what we are looking at," and the different types of biomass energy. I have a problem with just keeping it within Infrastructure because the NWT Housing Corporation needs help to address harnessing biomass energy in our communities up and down the valley. It went from 2,400 units to 2,600 units, and I heard now there was 2,900 units, and...

Mahsi, Madam Chair. Mahsi to the Minister for that, but I think she missed the mark here, the gist of my statement. I am aware of what the government is doing. I see it. I worked in Infrastructure. I know what you've been doing in the new government buildings. You're converting. You're converting just government buildings, only governments. I'm looking at a big picture here, and I said it: where's our research and development to harness biomass energy for use throughout the Northwest Territories? That's why I asked if the energy guy, Mr. Jenkins, could provide us with what they see in this...

Yes. Thank you for that. It's interesting to note that you do have 14 settlement maintainers spread out throughout the territories, and I imagine they are in the smaller communities, not in the larger centres. The larger centres, they carry the operating engineers. They are the ones who deal with all of the heating appliances. I suppose, say you were in a community like a fly-in community, maybe Aklavik; somebody would have to fly in from Inuvik who is an operating engineer or else from Fort McPherson. I don't know if they have one there.

What I am saying is: can we get these settlement...