Thank you, Mr. Chair. It is our intention, working with NT Energy, to work with the community closely on alternative proposals. As the Member is aware, many proposals have existed over the years. At this point, there is current discussion with regard to more smaller hydrokinetic type of installations associated with the Bear. Of course, any type of installation in such a pristine river requires due study with regard to its environmental and other impacts and this is the work that’s proposed. We have had good discussions with the community on this matter and anticipate, subject to appropriation of course, that we would get underway with this in the new year and look forward to the results that we could report back.
Thank you, deputy minister. Next on my list I have Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Certainly with the energy contributions, we certainly were pleased and people in Deline were pleased that the MECC Committee found it in their hearts to support that continued project. They have been at it for 17 years and they were just waiting for further funding to finish off the studies so they can come back and say this is exactly what they’ll need to start the construction. That’s my understanding. The Minister can correct me if I’m wrong. To start the construction of the Bear River hydro initiative. This has been in their view for about 17 years. Incredibly patient, as with the people from Whati. That is something that they look forward to.
I want to ask the Minister, is that something that on a going-forward basis is your understanding, that once the Deline people have done what they have to do, then that will come to, now, where do we find the money. It’s almost like the business case that where do we find the money to do the construction for the Bear River hydro.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This will allow work to continue there, and the Member is correct. I mean, it’s going to take a sizeable piece of capital to put some hydro opportunity in the Bear River. Even if it is small scale, it still will come with a big price tag.
As far as what the $200,000 will get the community and the project, maybe we could go to Deputy Minister Vician for a bit of further detail.
Thank you, Minister. I’ll go to Deputy Minister Vician.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thanks for the question. The purpose of the ongoing work is to look again at other feasibilities and some alternative installations, hydrokinetic installations in the Bear River. By no means are we contemplating this to be the large scale kind of proposal that we’ve seen in previous iterations. The objective here is to identify the right kind of technology that can work with the Bear River in the region that can be integrated into the local grid in Deline.
We’ve had, again, some good discussions with the community on options for alternative technologies. I think many of the Members are familiar with many of the technologies that emerged in North America with regard to hydrokinetic installation. We’ve seen some success. We’ve seen some failure. This, again, continues to be feasibility work and trying to determine the parameters for an installation that could work in that area. We hope to be back to committee and to this House with, obviously, a solution that moves to a hydro solution versus the diesel generation that’s necessary today.
Thank you, Mr. Vician. Mr. Yakeleya.
Thanks for the update. The Bear has a lot of power, hydro power, and moving forward, when you look at a business case for the people in Deline to look at putting in a hydro plant, they could look at a long-term vision how do we get that revenue, how do we make it pay itself. There’s Tulita, there’s Norman Wells that could possibly be hooked up, or Good Hope. You know, thinking out there, we have oil and gas activity across the river that may be able to use some of that energy. I think it’s no different than us putting money into a hydro grid down south of the lake here to other jurisdictions. I mean, let’s look at our own backyard and see what the Bear River hydro could produce not only for the community but for other communities and possibly for the oil and gas industry. That’s something for out-of-the-box thinking in terms of supporting the hydro initiative in the Great Bear River.
I want to leave that open for the Minister and say it’s not just isolating one community and saying, well, it’s a couple million doesn’t make any sense or whatever, but let’s go beyond that, just as we are thinking about going beyond the lake here. Going down and selling our power south of the lake here and you want to invest in several hundred million dollars. We have a good business case also in the Sahtu region using the Bear River hydro initiative. I want to just leave that with the Minister.
The other point I want to make on the energy is that now we’re using more of the wood pellets in the Northwest Territories and we’re promoting that through an energy initiative, which is a good thing. People like that and people are using that now. They’re starting to warm up to the wood pellet concept. I want to ask: Is the department thinking about, along with the Department of Justice, is there any type of upcoming type of legislation to regulate wood pellets? Because it goes with the markets, the prices are high, the prices are low. Right now there are no regulations on wood pellets. You buy it as the market demands. We need to have some type of regulations on purchasing bags of wood pellets. Even some of our stores now are carrying them. Like, Northern Store is starting to carry wood pellets. We’re going to start an industry here in the Northwest Territories, so we’ve got to keep ahead of this here and protect the consumers. We want to promote wood pellets and just have some regulations and have some good discussion.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I agree with the Member. First off, we need to look at opportunities to get communities off of diesel. In the instance of Deline, perhaps it is hydro. In other communities there may be other alternatives, as well, so we just have to keep looking at opportunities.
On the wood pellets, we haven’t heard of any concerns that the Member has raised. I know plans are moving forward for the establishment of a wood pellet plant located here in the Northwest Territories. If the Member has concerns over consumer protection, that would be through the Department of MACA. They have a division there that looks at protection of consumers. We haven’t heard any of those types of concerns, and if the Member wants to raise those with us, we’d be happy to look into them for him.
Thank you, Minister Ramsay. Next on my list I have Mr. Moses, followed by Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. First off, I just want to say I appreciate the ongoing support and efforts to try to adjust the gas situation that’s going on in Inuvik, and although I wasn’t there for the commissioning of the LNG there last month or how many weeks ago it was, I still try to keep updated on how things are working and how it’s going. The Minister did mention that although we’re still looking for the meeting to long-term options for addressing heating in Inuvik, that possibility of LNG, which has been identified as the most promising solution to the energy situation that we’re dealing with in Inuvik.
Some of the things that I’ve been hearing is that the LNG is being consumed a lot faster than it was initially set out to be, and maybe if I can just get a commitment from the Minister to get us regular updates on the consumption of this LNG and just give us a little bit of a heads-up in terms of if we don’t have that LNG available to use, then we’ll have to switch back to natural gas and eat up our sources there, so maybe a commitment on how we can get updates on the LNG usage and consumption with the engines in Inuvik. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. Minister Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I should give some thanks to Minister Miltenberger and the Northwest Territories Power Corporation and work that they’ve done in Inuvik, as well as Premier McLeod in chairing MECC, on getting Inuvik the option of LNG. I was there for the commissioning of that facility and I think it was certainly a step in the right direction, again in an effort to get communities away from diesel.
As far as the questions about whether the consumption of LNG has been more than what folks in Inuvik had anticipated, those questions would probably be best answered by the Minister of the Northwest Territories Power Corporation, Mr. Chairman.
I just wanted to get confirmation on the consumption and usage of the LNG and whether or not it’s being used at a faster rate than initially proposed when the commissioning happened. I know there was an amount of days that they said that once it was ready to be used, and hearing that it’s actually being consumed a lot faster than what it was initially intended for. I know there are trial and error runs and we want to try to come up with the best solution, so I just want to know if it’s the same thing that the Minister is hearing.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. Minister Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Consumption is up. Whether it’s because it’s not as efficient as they thought it would be, I think the pressure is more on the cold weather and costs are up all over the place just because of the cold and the greater demand, but I can get that detailed information for the Member. Thank you.
As stated in the Minister’s opening comments, this is the most promising solution for our energy situation. With those fairly strong remarks, I was wondering if there are any other invested infrastructure possibilities to increase the storage space for this LNG, seeing that the Minister and I’m assuming that the Energy Committee has decided that this is probably our best solution, that if there’s investments looking in the future for a storage facility that can last for a longer period of days. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. Minister Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Part of that $150,000 earmarked for looking at LNG around the territory would include items like storage. It would also include looking at the possibility of getting LNG into other communities that have all-weather road access that are currently on diesel in the Northwest Territories, and that’s something that we continue to look at. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister Ramsay. Next I have on my list Mr. Bromley. It’s the second round, but go ahead, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I lied. I found, in the fine print, one more question.
The last few words on the page there, “the NWT electricity system analysis” is part of the energy budget here. At first blush, one might hope that we’re talking about smart read technology or smart meters, time of day pricing, hybridizing with renewables, things that would actually reduce the cost of living. But I understand, in retrospect, that in fact what we’re talking about is spending money on feasibility studies to connect the grids, especially with the southern grid so we can import dirty, coal-fired energy and perhaps find a naïve customer to buy our expensive electricity.
I would just note, most of these items on this page are electricity items, which accounts for about 4 percent of our energy budget. If we really want to be efficient and address the cost of living, there are much better ways that we can do it than what is being proposed here.
Just for clarity, can I find out how much we have spent in contracts on feasibility studies for connecting grids in the current year’s budget and what’s being proposed here for spending on those same feasibility studies and what amount we have out in contracts currently? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, we could collect that data and get it to the Member. Thank you.
That’s all I had. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Alright. Committee, page 12-21, activity summary, energy, operations expenditure summary, $2.988 million.
Agreed.
Agreed. Page 12-22, activity summary, energy, grants and contributions. Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a clarification question on the energy contributions under the $1.6 million. I notice in the description it talks about an Energy Plan charrette. Are we planning to have a follow-up or is that a follow-up to what we had before? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Minister Ramsay.
Yes, that was in the actuals from ’12-13, Mr. Chairman. Thanks.
So, I guess the question is: There is no plan for an energy charrette in this upcoming year; it’s just a descriptor making reference to a previous activity in another year. Is that correct?
That’s correct, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
Thank you for that clarification. Anybody else? Page 12-22, activity summary, energy, grants and contributions. Agreed?
Agreed.
Sorry, I forgot the total: $2.5 million.
Agreed.
Page 12-23, information item, energy, active positions. Any questions?
Agreed.
Page 12-25, activity summary, tourism and parks, operations expenditure summary, $13.783 million. Agreed?
Agreed.
Page 12-26, activity summary, tourism and parks, grants and contributions, $5.558 million. Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. If could maybe get a little bit more clarification with this $100,000 for the convention bureau. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Minister Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This comes to us from the Economic Opportunities Strategy. It’s a new initiative that we have. What it is, is it’s going to be a person that’s going to be working at Northwest Territories Tourism and their sole purpose is going to be to attract conventions and business-type meetings to the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Is this going to be a stand-alone organization? Where is it located and that kind of stuff? Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Chairman, that position is going to be fully integrated with NWT Tourism. Thank you.
Is it being, I guess, funnelled or funded with numbers or monies from main estimates, or is there a taxation component? I know there was talk about a potential convention tax. Is this attributing in any way, shape or form of a potential future convention tax? Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, there has been no discussion about the possibility of a tax. They will fund this. It’s a funded initiative. Again, it came as a result of the Economic Opportunities Strategy. Thank you.
