Wally Schumann

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We are pursuing federal funding through the Ocean Protection Plan. For Members of this House, that is a different pot of money from the bilaterals that we have signed. The federal government has set aside $1.5 billion for the nation for five years moving forward from 2017-2018 on this. Our Department of Infrastructure has been in conversations with different federal agencies because this pot of money has more than one federal minister in charge of it. It has Transport Canada. It has Canadian Coast Guard. I believe the Minister of Environment is also involved in that.

It...

My hope is to have the port of Hay River at least started on the dredging. We have to secure funding. We will have to see what the appetite of the federal government is to help partner with us to do this. We know it is a priority for us now that we own MTS. Federal dollars are invested in some of the marine stuff in Hay River; the Canadian Coast Guard also has an investment in it. We are pursuing these dollars as best we can. Yes, I certainly hope we can be able to say we are going to at least start looking after the restoration of the harbour in Hay River. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As I have said, we are in discussions. I believe that the federal government wants to sign off on some of this money moving forward. They have five different programs, I believe, under this with 57 different initiatives for all of Canada.

For the one that they announced in last August for the Northern three territories, I guess that would be us, Nunavut, Nunavik, is the Safety Equipment and Basic Marine Infrastructure program. That is the one we are in discussions with the federal government on this right now. Under this initiative, they want to look at doing something with 30 Northern...

Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following document entitled "Follow-up Letter for Oral Question 122-18(3): Procurement Policies and Impacts on Non-Governmental Organizations." Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I don't have that level of detail in front of me. I know that the stuff that we identified under marine priorities comes to about $55 million for our ask. When I said that this pot of money that they are talking about right now for $94 million, I don't know what we are going to get funded. I can get the breakout, what it would be looking to restore the harbour in Hay River for the Member.

I'm not aware of any large industrial components that are interested in doing this. As I have stated, I don't believe the technology is there yet. This is something that we are just keeping an eye on moving forward and how we can have it implemented in the future once it becomes a reliable source of energy.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Nuclear is an interesting conversation. I think, if you read the documents, we are interested in all new technologies that are coming down the pipe to help us meet the energy crunch that is coming and the greenhouse gas reductions that we will have to meet. The Nuclear Board of Canada was at the Arctic Energy Conference in Inuvik to participate. They were there with constituency of a few people to pay attention to what's going on and the needs across the North. We continue to follow the nuclear technology as it improves across the country.

At PDAC, I ran into the federal...

Well, first of all, I'll say no to that, just to protect myself. There are a number of circumstances that have to be taken into consideration on the closure of these ice roads. One of the things is, as I said, we have a guideline around how we operate the ice roads in the Northwest Territories. Climate change is impacting how the Government of the Northwest Territories operates and how we build and maintain these ice crossings in the NWT, and it's become a significant challenge. Even this year, we're having some challenges right now with a number of overflow issues on a number of the roads...

Mr. Speaker, as part of this government's mandate to diversify the economy to provide greater opportunity for our residents, we are moving forward with our vision to revitalize the Great Slave Lake fishery.

Since the release of our revitalization strategy last year, we have been working to put into place the many elements needed to move our vision forward. We have researched and are confident that the market exists for the unique fresh-water fish that Great Slave Lake can supply. We have identified, with the Tli Cho Cooperative, a viable business plan that will enable current and future NWT...

As I said, our energy strategy moving forward talks about all the types of future innovative and different technologies that are coming down the pipe. At this point, I don't think I want to put our resources into putting a paper into something that is probably quite a distance out, but we will continue to monitor it going forward, and if some more information that crosses my desk that I think is going to be relevant to the conversation of how we do the energy mix to lower our greenhouse gas emissions for the Northwest Territories, at that time I will look at bringing that out. Thank you, Mr...