Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I watched the news over this past weekend about the political unrest in Libya, the political unrest which has hit Egypt, the oil refinery fire in Iraq, and the ever-speculating on the cost of crude oil and how these prices are going up and how that’s going to affect us yet again as a Territory, what are we going to do about that? Are we once again going to be the victims of unaffordable fuel here in the Northwest Territories, or are we going to do something proactive in terms of the cost of living for our constituents here in the North?
Only four communities out of the 33 in the Northwest Territories are technically above the treeline. In other words, we are sitting in a giant forest here. There are many, many trees that can be harvested for fuel for woodstoves. We have spent millions of dollars as a government on studies, navel gazing, pontificating about what we’re going to do about the cost of living for people in the North. I would suggest you take $5 million. I’ll ask this Cabinet: be heroes, take $5 million, buy a trainload of woodstoves if you have to. Let’s get them into our people’s homes.
It’s fine to say we’ll give you a rebate, but if you haven’t got money to buy the stove, a rebate is not going to do you any good. Harvesting wood, cutting wood, chopping it, putting it in your woodstove is a healthy, wholesome activity. Our communities are sitting in the midst of a virtual forest, most of them. So I would suggest to this government, I will challenge you to find out how we can get woodstoves into our constituents’ houses.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Member for Great Slave, Mr. Abernethy.
