Wally Schumann

Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following document entitled "Yellowknife Airport Five-Year Business Plan 2018-2019 to 2022-2023." Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As I have said, at kilometre 140, everything seems to be working fine. The department will continue to monitor the other culverts moving forward. We will be installing these four heat traces in the springtime at 213, and we will monitor things going forward. If this becomes something that we need to do at other sections of the highway, we will have a look at it.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This issue came up last year, particularly around the Georgetown area, and we are continually monitoring this area with overflow issues on the Dempster in a number of places, as the Member has spoken about.

In particular, right now, at kilometre 213, we have an issue. The department built a couple of berms there to hold back water, but, due to climate change this year and the warming temperatures in that region, a lot of water is coming up from underground, and we had an issue on the highway. A contractor has been out there. He has ice-plated that section to make it...

Low water rates, we did a subsidy from 2014-2016 for the hydroelectricity region for the North Slave and the government provided a one-time subsidy of $49 million for a two-year period.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In 2016-2017 the GNWT provided $380,000 to Northland Utilities to reduce the rates in four diesel communities down to match the rates in NTPC communities. In 2016-2017 the Government of the Northwest Territories provided $6.4 million throughout the Territorial Power Subsidy Program to reduce residential rates in both NTPC and Northland thermal communities down to the Yellowknife rate. Through the Housing Corporation, the GNWT provides approximately $7 million a year to keep rates low for tenants. For income assistance clients, we provided approximately $800,000 in 2016...

If it's through the CAP program, that's an application that's on a first-come-first-served basis, and I think the community of Aklavik has done very well on it. As for the longer federal infrastructure plan, we're going to be signing our bilateral year pretty soon, hopefully in the next month or so with the federal Minister, and those types of programs are still being worked out; but I think there are plenty of opportunities for communities within the new infrastructure funding that's coming to the Northwest Territories over the next 10 years.

I'd gladly sit down with the Member and the proponents of the Canadian Natural Gas Proposal, whatever their legal entity name is, and the people who want to discuss it, and look at opportunities for the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As of late, when we are at the Mineral Roundup, that group was there and I had a chat with them, and they have sent me a proposal of how they see they can use the Cameron Hills LNG possibly in the Northwest Territories.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today, I'd like to recognize Braden McCullough, a very good friend of my son's, who lives here in Yellowknife, and it's her first time here to the Assembly.

The government is committed to investing in all of the communities in the Northwest Territories, but, in particular in the Sahtu, we have completed a biomass heating which was installed in the schools in Tulita and Fort Good Hope last year; we hope to expand the wood pellet use in the Sahtu region; we have the wind monitoring that will be getting under way very soon in Norman Wells, as that is one of the sites that has the potential to put a windmill in there; we have solar still being considered for a number of communities in the Sahtu; and I think there is some considerable potential that...