Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Department of Health and Social Services and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources are hosting a workshop this week for the potential for increasing support and resources to on-the-land programs. I would like to recognize some the presenters at that workshop who are in the House today. Representing the British Columbia First Nations Fund: Valine Crist, Jessica Housty and Kim Hardy; and representing Australia’s Working Group on Country Program: Steve Roeger, Daryl Lacey, Bruce Rose, Patrick O’Leary. I’d also like to recognize Steve Ellis, Tides Canada’s northern senior associate. Steve has been the key partner in identifying the need for this workshop and for pulling it together. So, thank you to Steve for bringing these experts north, and thanks for all of you for travelling so far to share your experiences with us. Welcome to the Northwest Territories and welcome to the House. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First I’d like to recognize Deneze Nakehk'o. I’ve known him a long time and it’s always great to see him. I certainly know his family very well and have great respect for them.
Mr. Speaker, I want to use the occasion to acknowledge our esteemed guest there, Dr. David Suzuki. In a funny way, many Canadians feel like we know him personally. As a small child growing up in Fort Simpson, I remember being sent to bed. But on Wednesday nights when I didn’t go to bed, I would turn my little black and white TV on and I’d have my little string earpiece so my parents didn’t know I was watching the Nature of Things. It was always great to watch him every Wednesday at 9:00 in Fort Simpson. All we had was CBC. So it’s great to see him, and as I said, it’s almost like all Canadians know him in some form. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to take this opportunity, as well, to recognize our former colleague – as Mr. Miltenberger said, many years here in the Legislative Assembly – and it’s very good to see former Premier Floyd Roland. Last night as my daughter and I were waiting for guests – we were going to the Explorer Hotel – Dr. Suzuki walked in the lobby, and my daughter, who’s only 25, said, “That’s David Suzuki,” and I said no, no, that isn’t. Anyway, I had to be proven wrong today. But welcome. It’s very nice to have you here. People recognize you, young and old obviously. Thank you.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Mr. Nadli.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m truly proud to recognize two Pages from my home community of Deh Gah School in Fort Providence: Mr. Julien Antoine, who is in Grade 9, and also Leah Baptiste, who is also in Grade 9. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Nadli. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d also like to join my colleagues today in recognizing and welcoming Dr. David Suzuki. I think there’s no question that he’s a great leader and visionary in Canada for the environment and for people’s health. I know he’s on the Blue Dot Tour, pursuing some changes to the Canadian Constitution that actually recognizes the value and the right to clean water, clean air and a healthy environment. So I really appreciate a life of dedication and I’d like to recognize that.
I’d also like to recognize Miles Richardson from Haida Gwaii. He actually was chairing one of the sessions that our EDI committee was attending in Fort Nelson not too long ago, and Steve Ellis, who was a resident of Weledeh – I don’t know whether he still is or not – and Deneze and all those in the House. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d first like to welcome and acknowledge His Worship, the mayor of Inuvik, Mr. Floyd Roland, also former Premier of the Northwest Territories and also former Member for Inuvik Boot Lake. I’d just like to welcome him back to the House.
I’d also like to take this opportunity to welcome and recognize Mr. Deneze Nakehk’o, a long-time friend, grew up together, long-time buddies.
Also, I’d like to welcome and recognize Mr. Miles Richardson from Haida Gwaii and Mr. David Suzuki. Welcome to the House. I hope you enjoy the proceedings, and good luck with your Blue Dot Tour. To all members of the David Suzuki Foundation, welcome and enjoy the proceedings. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to welcome to the Assembly this afternoon a constituent, Mr. Deneze Nakehk’o. Welcome. Also, former Premier, mayor of Inuvik. Great to see you back in the House, Mr. Roland. Also, to all the other visitors that have come from far and wide to be with us this afternoon, welcome to the Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Welcome everybody here in the public gallery today. Thank you for taking an interest in our proceedings.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I rise to acknowledge Mary Rose Sundberg and Rose Mackenzie. At a fall community feast at the Chief Drygeese Centre in Detah, in celebration of the Literacy Council’s Peter Gzowski Literacy Invitational, two Weledeh constituents and Yellowknives Dene members were recognized for their achievements.
Rose Mackenzie, who is a second-year Aurora College Ndilo Community Learning Centre student, was honoured with the Literacy Learner Award for her determined and successful efforts towards self-improvement as an adult learner. Particularly, Rose has excelled in mathematics, where she has moved through six grade levels in a year.
Mary Rose Sundberg, the founder and executive director of the Goyatiko Language Society in Detah, received the prestigious Gzowski Award, given to a person who shares the journalist’s spirit as a proponent for literacy.
Mr. Speaker, colleagues, please join me in recognizing the accomplishments of these constituents and their awards for outstanding achievement in their pursuit of literacy. Mahsi.
---Applause
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement today, I talked about the possible advantages of doing more about conservation when it comes to energy and I was speaking particularly about our high cost of power. My questions today are for the Minister responsible for the NWT Power Corporation.
I don’t know if I should have been in marketing, but I thought of a few campaign titles if we were to actually launch a campaign to encourage people to reduce their consumption of energy. I mentioned Ghostbusters. How about The Lights Are on But Nobody’s Home? I came up with a few others here too. I was just sitting here thinking about this.
I’d like to ask the Minister, what has his department, or his role as Minister responsible for the Power Corporation, what kind of research has gone into the advantages of a promotion or a campaign to encourage consumers to reduce the consumption of power? Thank you.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The Minister responsible for the Northwest Territories Power Corporation, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The underlying concern, of course, in some quarters, is that the Power Corporation has no interest in encouraging people to reduce and conserve because they are profit driven and they have to survive on their revenues. In fact, if that was the case, it no longer is. As we will see over the course of the next few days, there is going to be discussion about the Power Corporation, our Crown corporation of which we are the one shareholder, of how it can better be a vehicle for the energy policy of the Government of the Northwest Territories and the people of the Northwest Territories.
They are committed to conservation. They’re switching out simple things. Like, they’re switching out all their sodium vapour streetlights to LED streetlights. They’re going to be rolling out a very significant conservation program online here in the next few days. They’ll work with communities and homeowners to look at what things they can do to conserve energy. We have a common shared commitment on that, and we are going to work on that together here as we move forward.
That could be the title of another couple of campaigns: Urban Legends and Something About Myths.
Back to my question, what has this government done to launch any kind of a campaign directly targeted at consumers to encourage them? He’s named some things that the Power Corporation is doing, but what has this government done directly targeted at consumers to encourage them to reduce their consumption?
At the beginning of the 16th Assembly, we came forward and we put $60 million, as a government, into the development of an approach to energy savings, energy efficiency. We rolled out the biomass plan, the solar plan, a strategy that has guided us. We have spent millions converting to biomass in our own facilities. We have put millions of dollars into Environment and Natural Resources as well as the Arctic Energy Alliance to help people, to give them rebates for switching over to energy-efficient appliances, to switch to biomass, conversion with LED lights, we’ve picked up our work we’ve done on recycling, all of which are energy savers in the long run, in addition to the work we’re doing with the Power Corporation. We’ve mapped out, through our Energy Plan, a lot of these activities that we’ve continued to invest significant amounts of money into.
Minister Miltenberger made a brief reference to this theory or concept or myth that’s out there in the public that if it costs this much to generate, distribute and retail power in the Northwest Territories, that if we actually reduce our consumption, the unit price is not going to be changed, because they still need to receive a return on their investment. I’d like the Minister to speak to that issue. People are saying, well, if we use less , the unit price will go up and we’re not really going to accomplish anything.
Could the Minister please elaborate on this to dispel that myth?
I can talk to the Power Corporation. I can’t speak to the NUL, which, as well, is a distributor. I know we work hard to keep the price of energy as low as we can. As we move forward, as I’ve pointed out publicly, we’ve subsidized the Power Corporation over the last three years directly over $50 million to soften the blow and protect rates because of the increasing diesel costs, the fact that we haven’t raised diesel prices for five years to help offset the low water here in the Snare system. We have moved past the point of where it’s strictly a for-profit, you have to live off your revenues, you have to generate a dividend, to recognizing that as we have moved to a two-rate zone, and actually, we have started actually moving to more of a one-rate zone, we, as a government, have put in more and more money and our relationship with the Power Corporation is now very, very close. It’s not really an arm’s-length corporation. It’s much more consistent with the relationship we have similar to the Power Corporation, and as we move forward into the future that kind of relationship is going to continue.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final, short supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don’t doubt or deny that our government has spent millions to try and protect consumers from the rates, but I think we need a campaign directed at the consumers at a household level to get them to do their part in tandem with the government’s efforts to try and reduce their consumption.
Has that kind of a program ever been researched, and could there be projections done to see what kind of gains we could achieve from that? Thank you.
As we move forward on renewables like solar, that we have in place, after some considerable debate over the years, a Net Metering Program which encourages and doesn’t penalize folks for putting in solar in their own buildings. We have removed the cap, we have removed the standby charges. As we look at the charrette, we are going to be asking people for further ways that we can encourage people to look at generating distributed energy that they can generate and that we will buy back through a net metering process. There are those kinds of opportunities that currently exist and are going to continue to exist.
As we gather all these very, very interested and dedicated people around the tables here over the next few days, I’m sure we’re going to find out other things that people recommend that we can do. For example, should we, as a territory, as a government, should we subsidize the wholesale change out of every light bulb in the Northwest Territories to be an LED light within the year? Should we do those types of things?
What other things, in terms of conservation, should we do? We have beefed up our energy standards requirements, both in our own construction and what we encourage people to do when they build in the Northwest Territories. We’re working with industry to set up our first only pellet plant in the Northwest Territories. We spent years building the market, now we are building the industry. That’s going to give us a northern energy source that we believe will be cheaper and we know will save us 30 to 40 percent over the cost of diesel.
So, we are doing an enormous number of things and we are going to continue to do that. We are going to publically say, again, that we are prepared to invest tens upon tens of millions of dollars to help make this transition away from diesel into the more sustainable renewable. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Like the old saying goes, the gas goes in your car, not on your hands. Well, customers and trappers in the Sahtu cannot afford any more spillage at the pumps. They are getting gouged. My question is for Minister Beaulieu today.
Can the Minister tell this House why hunters and trappers, customers in Fort Good Hope, got a trick at the pumps last week instead of a treat? Someone needs to say more than I’m sorry.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister of Public Works, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The cost of gasoline or diesel motives or heating oil is all based on the purchase costs, the transportation, the commission that it costs us to deliver from our tanks to the homes or the cost of administering what they have there, which we refer to as operations and maintenance as well. Also, we keep track of the product evaporation and taxes. That’s it; there’s no profit on any of the fuels that we sell. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the Minister for sharing some of the information and the costs sheets with me. You know there is a gas war happening in Edmonton. It’s $1 per litre.
Would the Minister entertain giving customers, hunters and trappers in the communities like Fort Good Hope, a six-month grace period by selling fuel at the former rate of $1.80? Would he do that?
Mr. Speaker, the department, through the petroleum products division, has no ability to subsidize fuel. What we do have is the ability to stabilize the cost, so we have a Stabilization Fund that we use so that there are not sharp fluctuations in the costs. We use that fund to ensure that there isn’t a sharp increase at inappropriate times and so on. This fund, the Petroleum Fund, does not give us the ability to subsidize or we would run out and we would have to change the revolving fund. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, a promise is a promise is a promise. In Fort Good Hope they were promised that they’d be paying less for the fuel. We haven’t yet advanced far enough in our technology with the hunters and trappers to have little squirrels or animals operate our machines. We still rely on gas, and gas is what keeps our lives stable in Fort Good Hope.
I want to task the Minister again, using the Stabilization Fund, can that be used in our communities like Fort Good Hope? The hunters and trappers were told by the government that they will pay less for fuel. Can you give them a grace period, other than to let me know how the system works? That’s what they’re looking for. That’s something that this government could look at doing, to say I’m sorry, we made an oopsie.
The Stabilization Fund is there to stabilize the cost of fuel, that is correct; however, it is not there to provide subsidies. What the Member is asking for is for us to take a look at stabilizing at last year’s rate for an indefinite period of time, or six months, then what we would have to do is we would have to recover that cost at some point from somewhere. So, the only place where we have the ability to reduce the cost below the 100 percent is in Colville and Tsiigehtchic. Aside from that, other communities are too big, that once we start to provide any sort of percentage subsidy, it would cost us money and then we would see a reduction in our revolving fund. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary. Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to hold this government to account. In the CBC report this month, the government said people in Fort Good Hope would pay less to fill up their vehicles. Someone told the community of Fort Good Hope they would pay less to fill up their vehicles in the community.
Who said that? Which department? Which staff? If that’s not true, then they’ve got to be held accountable, and that’s what I’m saying. Can you say, I’m sorry, this is what we’ll do for this mistake?
It takes a real government to own up to that responsibility and that’s what I’m asking this government, in its goodness of the Stabilization Fund, to give them a grace period. Our fault, we’ll own up to it, we’ll bite the bullet. Because you know what? We just approved a $40 million project for the North, so we do have the money. Stop pretending we don’t have the money; the money is there. Let’s help the people in Fort Good Hope. Let this government be responsible and big enough to say, yes, we made this mistake and we’ll fix it and not goobley gobbling all over the answers. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The Member is correct that the wrong information and the wrong place was given out, and that was corrected. We had advised the community that that had occurred and we then issued the correct price to the community. However, again, it’s a fairly simple process that we have no ability to subsidize. Like I said to the Member, we do have an ability to stabilize the fund and that’s what we do, we try to stabilize the fund so that the constituents are not seeing sharp costs in fuel fluctuations in the cost of gasoline. So, I will check into exactly what had occurred, what type of information had been given to Fort Good Hope and I can let them know what we can do to resolve that error. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Member for Inuvik Boot Lake. Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Following up on my Member’s statement on the conference that will happening in 2016 in the community of Inuvik and looking at alternative energy sources and what’s happening in today’s world and in Canada, I’d like to ask the Premier of the Northwest Territories, we’re moving into our second Energy Charrette here starting today. Has he had any previous discussions with our leadership in the community of Inuvik and is he looking to any types of investments for this very relevant and timely conference that we’ll be having in 2016, seeing that we have enough time ahead of time to really plan and get a good conference going? Has he had any discussions with our leadership and is there any investments that he’s willing to invest in that conference? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. The honourable Premier, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ve had no discussions with anybody about this conference, other than the Member e-mailing me a press release advising of this change. I expect that in due course the money, or some portion of the money that we contributed for the oil and gas conference would probably be earmarked for a similar conference in 2016. Thank you.
Thank you. Outside of monetary commitments for investments and looking forward to this conference, I know that the government also seconds GNWT workers for organizations that also do work on behalf of government. By the time 2016 rolls around and this conference comes out, there’s a good chance we’ll have two, maybe even three charrettes by then and we’ll have a lot of GNWT employees who have a really good grasp of some of these areas in terms of alternative energy, where we’re going to invest.
Would the Premier be looking at putting in some type of recommendation in the transition reports to ensure that we have GNWT employees who are suited for this type of work possibly seconded to help assist with this conference? Thank you.
Thank you. The Member recognizes that there’s an election between now and June of 2016, but as a matter of course, we want to make sure that these types of conferences are successful. They provide for a lot of development and bringing investment into the community. By all means, we would do whatever we could to support it so it would be successful. Thank you.
In the press release, it mentioned that the Town of Inuvik is going to start preparing to have a very successful conference and trade show. In terms of any reports that do come out of the Energy Charrette that we had previous and this Energy Charrette, will the Premier ensure that the mayor and council as well as the staff that are focusing on this conference be on the distribution list or will they be able to get a copy of the report so that they can see where the government is going and possibly focus their conference on the same wavelength? Thank you.
I believe the mayor of Inuvik is part of the Energy Charrette, and by all means, the outcomes of the Energy Charrette will be in the public domain. So, they certainly will be available to the organizers of the Inuvik Arctic Energy and Alternative Technologies Show. Thank you.
