Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As you know, this week is NWT Education Week here in the Northwest Territories. It’s a great opportunity for us to recognize and highlight all the hard work that is being done by teachers, mentors and volunteers in the support of our children throughout the Northwest Territories. To that end, I’d like to talk a little bit about the recent Yellowknife and territorial learning fairs that have been held throughout the Northwest Territories over the last couple of months.
On February 11, 2011, I had the honour of judging at the Yellowknife Learning Fair which was held here at Mildred Hall School. I was blown away at the high quality of projects being presented, both from an historical and a science perspective. There were historical projects on a wide range of topics including Francois Paulette and Richard Van Camp, historical events such as The Lost Patrol and Vimy
Ridge, historical places such as The Wildlife Cafe and the CANOL Trail.
In addition, there was also a wide variety of science experiments ranging from the lifecycles of icebergs to the effects of oil spills on animals and birds. All of the projects were exceptional, Mr. Speaker.
This past weekend the award winning presentations at the community level came together in Yellowknife for the territorial competition. Although not a judge, I did go see a number of presentations and had an opportunity to talk to a lot of students. Once again, the projects were all excellent. Everyone I talked to about the projects and the event were thrilled by the experience. Students participating in these events should be very, very proud of all of their hard work and accomplishments. Their hard work does not go unnoticed, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, children are our future. Events like these help them build knowledge, skills and abilities that help them succeed throughout their lives. I would like to take this opportunity to applaud all of the teachers, mentors and volunteers who have helped make events like the local and territorial learning fairs possible. Their dedication and contributions are key to the success of these types of events and to our students and the development of children throughout the Northwest Territories.
So thank you very much to each and every one of you. Your contributions are appreciated. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
MEMBER’S STATEMENT ON
TERRITORIAL ENERGY-EFFICIENT
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We need to establish territory-wide building standards to meet the cost and climate changes of today. Currently, this government builds to a standard 25 percent better than the national model building codes. The GNWT’s Good Building Practices for Northern Facilities 2009 guidebook establishes this standard as a condition of RFP for all territorial government construction.
Under its municipal authority, the City of Yellowknife has set similar high energy-efficiency standards. That’s the extent of mandatory energy efficiency standards in the NWT. Outside Yellowknife, all private construction and municipal facilities built with territorial money must meet only the lower national standard, a lot lower. There is no legal requirement to do better.
We could wait for each municipality to expensively enact their own local legislation, or this government could establish a single territorial standard under which all will benefit. That’s what they’ve done in the Yukon. Under that territory’s 2002 Building Standards Act, government has the authority to replace or modify the requirements of the National Building Code and require higher standards more suited to our northern realities.
Governments can lead change with a mixture of incentives and requirements. We missed the opportunity to do this under the New Deal when every community was provided with infrastructure dollars and gas tax funds and had to develop energy plans but no standards were required. With regulation and the right support, it is in the public interest to reduce costs and climate impacts while helping protect citizens and communities from oil’s inevitable price climb.
We’ve put our own house in order, now it’s time to make sure all NWT buildings follow our lead. At a minimum this must be a proposed and evaluated tool in our Greenhouse Gas Reduction Strategy. The Minister of MACA has repeatedly been on record as being willing to let communities and private enterprises continue to build low-efficiency infrastructure and have the public bear the costs.
I will be asking the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources what actions his department has taken to assess and move to adopt this common-sense tool in the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Strategy being developed.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.
