Wally Schumann

The development of the approved diamond manufacturer application process is a lengthy collaborative process. ITI has determined that discussions with the interested manufacturers and brokers are most effective when changes to the DPF are represented in a manner that clearly outlines the department's new amendment in investments requirements. This methodology allows the manufacturer to better understand the environment and the key investment drivers. Following these preliminary discussions, ITI has shared the matrix with others, and relayed the information to recent interested parties. I can...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First of all, I can't answer part of his question because it is considered proprietary, because there is only one manufacturer. What I can tell the House is the producers make available 10 percent of their production by value to the manufacturers. Over the past eight years, only an average of 0.6 percent or $10.6 million annually has been used by the manufacturers. That's one of the reasons you could see why we took this initiative to change this policy.

As I said, I will get all the information pertinent to this information that we need to make a decision on this. If it clearly needs to be done and it is something we can finance without going for an appropriation from our Finance Minister, we will certainly look at doing that. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As I said, we are working with our Indigenous partners. We have also had the prior history with the Deze group, who also supported this project going forward. I have had engagement with all three Indigenous governments on the funding announcement. They are willing to participate in this. We will be going out and engaging communities on these projects and Indigenous organizations to ensure that their participation and partnership is going to help us empower this project, and we will work on that basis going forward.

I can certainly follow up with the department and get them to have a conversation with our superintendent in the region to reach out to the local community and talk to our contractor on that section of the highway to see what is happening on the ground and get back to the Member on what our plans are moving forward.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I clearly laid out in my Minister's statement today, there are one or two things that we want to do. One of the first things we need to do is dust off some of that old work that has been previously done with the Indigenous partners that they had at the time, the Deze group. There has to be a significant amount of work that has to be done, the technical aspect of it, as well as the environmental assessment part of this that has to be revitalized, so we are going to be looking at all those things.

As I have said, we want to ensure that all the previous engineering and...

As I have said, we have a lot of work to do. We have to work with our Indigenous partners and do all our preliminary work that needs to be done. So it would be kind of pre-emptive on how we are going to pay for this if we can't prove that there is a viable project, but I'm sure the Minister of Finance has been in discussions with his federal counterpart on looking at different ways that we may have to change our borrowing limit on this.

There are different opportunities on financing this project, and that is what we need to scope out. It might be through the federal infrastructure bank. It...

Yes, we clearly announced that we had $1.2 million with the federal Minister of Northern Affairs, Minister Leblanc. We don't have an application as such. We are hoping that there is going to be something in the coming months that the federal government will get behind and help support this project. I would probably closely watch the federal budget to see if there is going to be any extra funding in there.

I am well aware of these batteries. Jeff actually met with me probably almost a year ago and had a discussion around these things. I think he has become now the actual Canadian supplier for these things. I don't think he has actually sold any quite yet. He is working on a number of initiatives right across the country on what he is trying to do.

We are having a look at these things. They have not been installed anywhere in Canada yet, but we have to have a serious look at how we are going to tackle these battery situations across the Northwest Territories, particularly around the wind and solar...

First of all, I'd be very curious to see reaction from committee when Mr. Philplipp did his presentation. As we all know, he's a very high-energetic guy. I call him the Elon Musk of the North. He has a lot of ideas. He's got a lot of stuff going on there.

In our discussions with Jeff, there are a few things that he wants to try to accomplish all at once, and I suggested that we need to piecemeal this a little bit if we're going to even have a look at this thing. He wanted to know who he needed to talk to within our department, and I directed him to our energy division to sit down and have those...