Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we do not need another Deh Cho Bridge financial boondoggle, yet we have already sunk more than $13 million in public money into the Taltson Hydro Project. I want to know how the public interest is being represented in the controversial and ephemeral proposed routing of the Taltson hydro transmission line to serve a single customer goal: the diamond mines. Where is the strategic thinking?
Restricting a transmission line to the east side of the lake may serve our project partners in their search for returns, but I don’t see a serious consideration of public interests, interests that would accrue with an alternative routing. A west-side routing would tie in the diesel communities of Kakisa and Fort Providence, cross the bridge designed to accommodate transmission lines, and link the Snare and Taltson hydro systems. We’d have renewable energy for Avalon secondary processing and the Nico, Tyhee and Avalon mines, and a shorter route on from Snare to the diamond mines. We’d also get Behchoko and Yellowknife on an expanded hydro grid and off diesel completely. We’d have a diversified market of hydro customers insulated from the boom and bust of being committed to just one major customer.
Mr. Speaker, the NWT Hydro Corporation strategic plan promises a “feasibility analysis and design of a potential electrical grid for the NWT.” With 13 million bucks in public money invested, we aren’t any closer to that strategic vision. We have a plan to run a transmission line through a national park to the diamond mines instead of building an integrated distribution network serving the entire North and South Slave. Piecemeal expansion without strategic vision is not in the public interest. Even a basic look at the $13 million of actions to date shows that they aren’t getting the big picture: the supply of power to go to where the economy is and where we can reliably predict it will be. It must go there.
The Deh Cho Bridge disaster proves the dangers of getting locked into arrangements with consortia that can lose control of their projects. Yet, here we are again linked in partnerships we could live to regret because of their lack of focus on public interests. If this goes off the rails, this government will once again be stuck with a bill for finishing a project too far along to abandon.
Mr. Speaker, it’s time for this government to take control of the utilities it owns and start building for the future. I’ll be asking questions…
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
