Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister of Environment and Natural Resources committed, a number of months ago, to completing a new Greenhouse Gas Reduction Strategy this spring. But where are we today? We apparently have a new Greenhouse Gas Strategy renewal process plan, which fails to acknowledge even old opportunities. It’s a hollow document, long on process and lacking essential analysis or actions.
Take territorial building standards. Higher construction costs are a hard sell, but when you have the numbers, they are plain sense and lower operating costs buying back upfront costs. Support programs can make this work but we need the numbers and a plan. Take distributed energy both for public and private buildings. We’ve used it for years. Yet again, no numbers are provided to assess possible gains. Same thing with waste heat energy recovery.
The Minister has supported a roundtable this Friday to explore the facts and advantages of carbon pricing. Though a very hard sell, detailed analysis for the progressive redistribution of cost will at least help assess potential gains from this tool. When my colleague Mr. Krutko and I saw Nordic countries’ universal adoption of building standards, distributed biomass energy and carbon pricing with the huge emission reductions they achieved, we knew a plan was needed here to nail down similar economic and environmental benefits. But we still have no such plan.
Feedback I’ve received from the most recent strategy consultations is not positive. A brief report from the Minister’s office says participants agreed that “the goals, objectives, principles and targets of the strategy need to be revised and clearly articulated.” I say, no kidding, Mr. Speaker. Where participants expected basic measures like higher energy efficiency, building standards and carbon pricing to be highlighted and assessed, they had to suggest them for the umpteenth time. Another process checklist but no action plan.
We’ve made big improvements to GNWT operations but we must now extend them across the NWT. To convince citizens and industry to come along, we have to prove it’s the best way to go. The task is large and requires a serious effort. Instead we had a lack of senior people at the January meeting, a lack of analysis, short notice of the meeting, a lack of costed actions, and time is short.
I’ll have questions for the Minister, Mr. Speaker, but as an aside, I want to mention that leading the way on environmental responsibilities brings big tourism gains as well. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.
