Rylund Johnson

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We've been at this Taltson thing for about two decades now and tens of millions of dollars in engineering studies, and I guess my first question is can the Minister tell me how much this Taltson Expansion is going to cost? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Sorry, I know we call want to go home but I would like to just make some comments about the final budget as we are passing it and the commitments that the Minister made in this House previously.

Initially, I said my support on this budget was contingent on two things. That was some more money for our community governments and some more money for our nonprofits. Unfortunately, I had to vote in favour of the carbon tax to get the money for the community governments as I just did but I'm happy to see that additional approximately $1.8 million combined with $600,000 in this...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. You know, I don't actually know whether we should build Taltson, and I don't think I should even have an opinion on it. I think the power corp needs to have a business case, and it needs to be evidencebased, and we need to crunch the numbers to see who's going to buy our power, for how much, and if it makes sense then most certainly we should do that. And, really, it is an evidencebased decisionmaking, and we shouldn't be here on the floor of the House asking basic questions such as how much is this whole thing we've been talking about for decades actually going to cost...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I didn't hear how much the project was going to cost, which seems like a pretty fundamental thing you would want to know, is how much is this project going to cost. We have an MOU to build it. We were asking the federal government to give us money. Certainly we must know how much we're asking for, Mr. Speaker. But apparently not.

Mr. Speaker, one of the reasons that this project has fallen through in the past is that we just can't quite get to a rate of power that is competitive with the price of diesel, and so mines do not want to enter into a longterm power purchasing...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. How much is the Taltson project going to cost? Where is it going to go? Who are we selling the power for? Mr. Speaker, people in this House have been asking those questions for two decades. In 2004, Joe Handley said that a line to the diamond mines was expensive; it was going to cost us $170 million, Mr. Speaker. Well, Mr. Speaker, if we could get a line to the diamond mines from Taltson for $170 million, I'd build it tomorrow. However, Mr. Speaker, what happened in 2014 is after spending $18 million in studying, we found out the diamond mines didn't want to buy our...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I was not part of the committee, and so I'm just trying to catch up on where we're at with this. But I want to note that the act, where it's starting a new complaint process does the director first has to decide whether to even disclose the identity of the complainant to the operator. And I would say in many cases, you probably don't want to do that. And if I'm going to file a complaint against my day home, I'm probably going to ask to remain anonymous. And I know that anonymous complaints processes are often used in other jurisdictions in day homes to protect the...

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Selling 60 megawatts in this territory is no small feat. You know, we're definitely going to need quite a few mines and they're going to need to operate for multiple decade with longterm power purchasing agreements to sell 60 megawatts of power. And I didn't hear how much the project was going to cost, and I didn't hear how much we actually expect that power to cost. I'll note that a lot of these operations can look to Alberta that sell at about $0.12 a kilowatt hour power, which is a lot cheaper than what we could ever hope to get to.

Mr. Speaker, I'm hoping...

Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the Member for Great Slave, that Bill 61, An Act to Amend the Ombud Act, be read for the third time. And Mr. Speaker, I request a recorded vote. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Bill 66, An Act to Amend the Property Assessment and Taxation Act, received second reading on November 3rd, 2022, and was referred to the Standing Committee on Government Operations for review. Committee engaged with stakeholders and the public in its review of the bill. Committee held a public review on the bill on January 23rd, 2023, and received two written submissions.

Committee was able to use that feedback to seek amendments that take transparency into consideration. Committee was pleased to work with the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs on these...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm going to start with some I think in hindsight, I believe both the Minister and committee would have done this differently, and I think there's some lessons to be learned here. You know, it's unfortunate that, you know, that the Minister and probably quite a few of the staff and a lot of the MLAs weren't allowed around for the last carbon tax but if you were ever introducing legislation on any topic, go look if there's an old committee report about it because these committee reports make the same recommendations every single time and there is there's stacks of...