We had those discussions with Finance. The costs are all there, separating out what we want to attribute directly to weather and climate change versus the more normal occurrence. We’re looking at that. But clearly, as I said yesterday, there is a need for us to capture that more accurately so that it doesn’t overpower or blur into other areas of normal government operations, and it is, as the Member has pointed out, getting to be a fairly high number.
I’m disappointed that we, as a government, are not on top of that equation, and we should have been for the last several years. We heard just a month or so ago about the storm surges and whatnot in Tuktoyaktuk that left some government buildings hanging over the water, oil tanks suspended or lost into the sea and so on. We’re losing, in some areas, 10 metres of coastline per year there. I’d say the writing is on the wall for that community.
We’re looking at $22 million here on top of the $32 million for the fire suppression this year. Have we estimated the cost? Are we planning on what to do or what it’s going to take to move the community of Tuktoyaktuk? The writing is clearly on the wall there. I would think the Minister would recognize that.
That work is underway. Senior officials have been up to the community, along with the regional staff, to look at what’s necessary. All the efforts to hold back the rising waters and the storm surges have proven fruitless, the amount of money spent on gravel and big rocks and it just gets washed away.
The issue of relocation is one that is clearly the most viable option that is being looked at and that work is underway.
Just for perspective here, would the Minister agree we’d be talking probably in the tens of millions of dollars for that exercise?
It’s early days, but absolutely we’re going to be spending in the many millions of dollars as we get started, and if it’s the whole community, all the low-lying areas, the relocation, the lock, stock, and barrel relocation of the community would be very expensive.
We’re spending now $50 million over the last 12 months and planning for the next eight or ten months so that people that could experience high power rates would be protected from those. The latest information shows that we’re talking billions of dollars for public infrastructure and damages over the next 15 years. Then we have private, commercial and institutional infrastructure. Are we planning on bailing out all of those to protect our public from the costs of climate change in this manner?
We place a high priority on the cost of living. We will do the things we can, like what’s before the House right now in terms of mitigating those high costs. If these extreme weather events continue to drive our costs then there are going to be some significant hard decisions that are going to have to be made on how we manage our way through that.
I agree with the Minister there. Would the Minister agree that comprehensive planning can help mitigate what the costs will be without planning?
As we have discussed over the years, we have to do both. The mitigation initiatives that we have to reduce our carbon footprint to get off fossil fuels will help do our part in terms of lessening the pressure on the climate change and warming temperatures, but we also know that those types of activities don’t bear fruit for 30 to 40 years. We’re also going to be spending more immediately and more greatly on the adaptation that’s going to be required with things like erosion, permafrost, the money we’ve spent in our lifetime here just on replacing failed piles and all those other related costs. We have to do both.
We have to do both and to do it effectively, it takes planning. I think the Minister would agree with that. How, in what modest way, are we planning to use some of this $22 million to do both?
As I laid out in my comments, after a good discussion with committee, initiated by Member Bouchard, we are going to look at taking 10 percent of that money and putting it in towards efforts that are going to, hopefully, or help, diminish some of the demand through things like speeding up whatever streetlights need to get done to LEDs, and we’re going to put some more money into Arctic Energy Alliance and work with them to beef up their rebate programs, their incentive programs for people to switch to more energy efficient equipment or solar and those types of things. But I’d ask the deputy minister if he could walk us through the details.
Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Mr. Aumond.
As the Minister stated, it would be about $2.2 million provided to enhance alternative energy uptake. About $400,000 of that right now is charted for the Northwest Territories Power Corporation of which about $300,000 is looking toward switching out streetlights to more efficient LED lights, particularly in Behchoko and Detah.
We’re also looking at some solar in Fort Liard and in Wrigley and then about a $1.8 million enhancement to Arctic Energy Alliance to help beef up some of those programs that are currently oversubscribed so that we can get more people to uptake those programs than presently have the ability to do that today.
We’re also looking at some special projects such as community LED swap-outs where we’ll provide energy-efficient lights in communities and looking at some partnerships with community governments and NWTAC around some solar projects and around also looking at what AEA can achieve, in partnership with Public Works and Services, around alternative energy such as solar. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Aumond. Anyone else? Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Madam Chair. The initiatives that Mr. Aumond has just spoken about, I’ll get back to them, but I want to ask the Minister in regards to the low water. Are we expecting, in the upcoming years in the next government, that will continue? Is there any type of prediction as to the low water that we’re dealing with in the Bluefish Hydro area that this government is going to be expected or asked to forecast a huge amount of dollars to offset the high cost of having that facility operate? The way I guess I understand it is that the whole Northwest Territories is paying for this expenditure. Is there any type of forecast that this is going to continue on, year after year we’re going to be baling out the hydro energy use used by people in this area? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya, Minister Miltenberger.
Thank you, Madam Chair. The hydrological prediction and looking into the future is not an exact science. It’s tied to many variables that you don’t know from year to year. What we do know is that over the years the snowpack has diminished, the glaciers are melting, the rainfall patterns are changing and we’re now into year four of a drought. Around the world what used to be reliable weather patterns have now disappeared, so we are anticipating this is the second year, which is why we’re doing things like putting out the expression on solar and wind and we’re working to invest to get off of fuel. Here, the prediction on the water, I am anticipating we’re still going to be on low water next year unless we get what they say is going to be a warm winter with lots of snow. But at this point that’s a prediction and we don’t know if it’s going to come to pass.
We have a Fuel Stabilization Fund that’s set up to level out the impacts of these types of occurrences across the whole territory so that no one area has to pick up the tab if something goes wrong in their particular region. The Fuel Stabilization Fund doesn’t have the resources, so the options are fairly simple: we either just keep raising rates or we, as a government, step in to try to make sure that we don’t drive up those rates to make it unaffordable to live here. Thank you.
The Minister’s quite correct in terms of predictions of the future. Maybe down in this area here the water is low, but I know that up in our area the water is quite high. You know there’s lots of water in the mountains for the fall hunt, lots of water the people say when they go up to the Keele River to do their fall hunt. There’s lots of water up there. So we have to be very specific, not to generalize too much to scare off people here.
Now, the Minister has talked about a very interesting point on the future energy of the Northwest Territories. I sit in a region where there’s lots of natural gas and we have a potential for some hydro initiatives. Our studies show that we’re not in a good place for any type of wind energy, plus we could do some more work in the solar energy, but we’ve got a lot of fuels in the woods, in woodstoves and burning wood. I haven’t seen any type of creative thought to having wood as a source of energy for people in our small communities, not even to look at the possibility of tapping into Norman Wells natural gas to fuel our communities or even to go forward with the Hay River run-of-the-mill hydro. We see lots of initiatives south of Wrigley in spending dollars but we don’t look at the smaller communities, except we’re looking at Colville Lake. Actually, the world’s looking at Colville Lake at the solar panel and the diesel. Other than that, nothing in Good Hope except Good Hope has made some strong initiatives to bring woodstoves in and put them in the housing, or Tulita or Deline.
I think we’re a little frightened to look at the natural gas in Norman Wells. There could be a business case with ITI to look at how we cap in with the natural gas in Norman Wells to link up to our communities. It’s clean energy, it’s cheap and it could bring down the energy use and also there’s an abundance of that. Oil under the ground, the National Energy Board has estimated over 200 billion barrels of oil. Let’s not be afraid of these types of potential in our region.
I wanted to state to the Minister that we have these projects going around the communities but I have not seen much other than to have the solar panels. I’ve seen them. I drove up to Colville Lake and I saw them. They looked quite impressive. Test that out to see if it’s working well and the cost of their energy is going to go down, but other than that I haven’t heard anything from this government as to how they’re going to work with the community of Deline on their run-of-the-mill hydro plant. Nothing concrete, it’s sitting there and there are no dollars going towards that initiative to get it going. Look at the possibilities of a hydro transmission line from Deline to small communities. You can have pretty well one cent a kilowatt if you have that operation going over a long period of time.
So, Madam Chair, our region is sitting on billions and billions of barrels of oil. We’ve got to do something with that, even having a case built with this government to see if we can tap into the natural gas. Things like that. One of the ones that I think could fly, and I’ve heard it before, was to use wood as a source of energy in our communities with woodstoves, and that can benefit a lot of people, benefit our communities. So we’ve got to do something in that area. So, I wanted to remind the Minister, when you look at the additional dollars, to look at the communities that can benefit quite a lot and let’s use what we have.
The Member raises good points. What was once old is new again. I mean, I’ve been a homeowner for just about 40 years and I’ve had a woodstove from the very first time I set up housekeeping with my expectant wife. Now, it’s been rediscovered and it’s like a technology or a skill that people have lost and have to relearn. Yes, we do sit in the heart of the Boreal Forest.
We’re also, in Norman Wells, for example, building up something of a biomass industry where they’re bringing in pellets. Businesses and homes are converting. The Power Corporation is still on natural gas. Everybody else has been given their notice and we’re making the switch. The thing about natural gas is it’s demonstrated to be somewhat cheaper than diesel, about 20 to 25 percent cheaper. When the price of oil was a bit higher, the difference with biomass was about 30 to 40 percent. Plus it’s a renewable resource. A lot of it is locally harvested and just about all of it will be once the pellet mill gets put in place.
In terms of the power, we’re looking at about $30 million for one megawatt. Lutselk'e, when the studies were done, and we invested hundreds of thousands of dollars with Deline to prove that out, and if they want to go bigger and put in a transmission line for two other communities and it’s more than one megawatt, then that price of that hydro dam would increase accordingly and it would be a bigger impact.
There are, in my mind, with today’s technology some better investments. For example, I’ve mentioned Lutselk'e where we have a power purchase agreement with the Lutselk'e community and Bulldog Power for a power purchase agreement, and they’ve put up, I think, 35 kilowatts of power and it’s feeding into the grid.
There are some that would say it’s just for show, it doesn’t really work. But what the solar people have shown us is that you get seven months of good solar here and if you can cut all your other energy requirements for seven months and then only get a marginal solar output and have to use other types of backup, you’re better off than just say, ah, it’s not worth it and just keep burning diesel. As we know here in Yellowknife, burning diesel is not an option.
We have intentions in the coming years to go across the territory. For example, all the thermal communities, especially the small ones, have all been changed out with LED streetlights to cut the demands. The money that we’re putting in that Deputy Minister Aumond talked about is going to be available there to all the communities. We are, in the 18th Assembly, those of us who come back, are going to have to look at some significant investments in Yellowknife, up in Inuvik, where you could put in nine megawatts of power that would cut the diesel consumption in the Northwest Territories for generation in half, which would be a cost savings as well as huge impact on our carbon footprint.
We have lots of work to do. We’ve come a long way in the last four or five years, but clearly, there are a lot of things to do in terms of the energy sources that we use and the affordability.
I’m certainly looking and being very optimistic as to the solar project in Colville Lake. People up there are looking forward to seeing the benefits. It could certainly reduce the cost of their consumption. There is a lot of money spent on energy, especially with their small co-op store that has a huge power bill every month. We’re certainly looking forward to that project and hopefully that will be duplicated in the other communities.
That’s the goal. Really, it’s the goal for the homeowner either living in public housing or their own private housing is to get a cheap power bill. A lot of complaints from my communities is the amount of money that we spend on good, reliable energy. We want that. When we flick our light, we want to make sure it goes on and stays on. That’s what we pay, the cost, and that’s where I’m wanting to use some of my comments here is to look at ways that we could have ultimately clean energy.
Hydro is one of the cheapest and cleanest energy other than natural gas or things like that. But we have a lot of natural gas in our area. The Norman Wells oilfield burns off a lot of natural gas every day. That flare stack is going off a lot, steady and constant since the ‘30s. I guess that’s my point, is that can we tap into the natural gas and to look at those other customers. If not, have we looked enough with the hydro in Deline? Have we explored it aggressively and persistently to see if this is a possibility with the money that we have?
Certainly, the Minister is correct. You and I and other Members had this discussion on the old becoming new. Going out there and harvesting wood for ourselves and making sure that people in the communities through no matter what can have a wood burning option, a wood stove, a good wood stove, and cut wood, that would certainly cut down a lot of other issues. Do we have that type of incentive so if people want to get out and say yes, I’ll cut a cord of wood? There’s an incentive to go out there to get the wood and to burn it and decrease their use of diesel fuel, because the fuel that we get is coming from outside the Territories, sometimes even outside of Canada, while at the same time we’re sitting on huge reservoirs of oil and gas and we’re not doing too much about it. That’s crazy thinking, I think. Why not use our own resources? Let’s look at that. Let’s not be scared of it and fear, fear itself. Let’s see what we can do for ourselves.
That’s where I want to end, with these energy types of discussions. Let’s start looking at our own resources and not be dependent on foreign oil or foreign gas here.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Your 10 minutes was already up, but I looked at the clock and it said 4:43, and I thought you had four minutes and 43 seconds, so that was a bonus, okay? So I’ll take that as a comment. Thank you. We’ll move on. I’m going to call the page again and people can still put their hand up and speak to it. This is detail remember. This is not general comments anymore.
Finance, deputy minister’s office, not previously authorized, $22.129 million. Total department, not previously authorized, $22.129 million. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I just had one other set of questions here. I’m wondering when the Minister will be purchasing the $20 million worth of diesel fuel for this purpose.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. Aumond.
Thank you, Madam Chair. The fuel services division for the Department of Public Works and Services is the supplier for the Power Corp of the diesel and they are looking at all sorts of avenues, including perhaps even hedging the price to lock it in. But there is only so much storage capacity at the Jackfish facility. The fuel will go in as required, but they are looking at opportunities for the amount of fuel that they’ll need over the coming months and locking that into a price if they and the Power Corp determine that that’s an acceptable price to pay for the duration of the time that they’ll need it. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Aumond. Mr. Bromley.
Thanks to the deputy minister for that response. I know he’s aware that some of the conventional authorities are forecasting $20 a barrel of oil. Certainly the price is dropping and it’s anticipated to continue to drop. I believe we budgeted about $1 per litre and I’m wondering, if that’s so, what are the potential savings on this purchase?
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Miltenberger.
Thank you, Madam Chair. The most immediate one is the 10 percent we’ve talked about and taking advantage of what was budgeted and what we anticipate or know we are going to be paying here in the foreseeable future, leaving us enough room should there be any kind of subsequent increase. If we budget a dollar and we get it at 80 cents a litre, I’d have to ask Mr. Kalgutkar to do the math for me to give us an idea, or Mr. Aumond, to give us an idea, but this is how we’ve accommodated putting this money into conservation was on that gap.
Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Aumond.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Currently pricing is coming in around 75 or 74 cents per litre as opposed to the dollar that was budgeted. We have $2.2 million of that in savings, so that will equate to savings of about 6.4 if the price stays steady. As the Member said, the price could go down. There were reports today that the price of fuel is up today and as the price goes down, demand goes up. Again, we are trying to be prudent and cautious about that, but I don’t think anybody has been all that accurate lately at predicting about where the price of fuel is going to go. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Aumond. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Madam Chair. The deputy minister mentioned 25 percent savings, 75 cents instead of a dollar. Just to help the Minister out with that complex math, with a dollar a litre and it’s 80 percent, then that’s 20 percent savings and we’re putting 10 percent into these other initiatives. I guess I’d like to ask the Minister to commit, should these savings be realized, that he bumps up any savings in this amount committed and allocated to renewable energy and energy efficiency such as we’re doing with the 10 percent we are very sure we’re going to get, really make that commitment. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Miltenberger.
Thank you, Madam Chair. The potential for possible savings, I know it’s 20 percent. I just wasn’t quite sure it would be of $2.2 million. We are going to be putting out expressions of interest to do five and 10 megawatts of power here. To actually put the solar on the ground is probably $35 million or so. So we are going to be committing to some very serious investments here in Yellowknife in the coming years as we are going to be up and down the valley as we move to make these critical investments managing our debt limit and those types of things. Yes, there is going to be continued commitment to invest major dollars. I would suggest far and above savings we might realize from this particular low water surcharge. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I don’t want to spend any more time on this, Madam Chair, but we’ve been interested before and an expression of interest is not a commitment. An expression of interest is curiosity. We need commitment. We have passed over and over again the opportunity to put in renewable energy to avoid these costs. We could do a much more significant effort here had we taken the sufficient funds last year to put in five megawatts that would have handled at least a third to a half of the monthly demands now forecasted in materials the Minister has provided us with from the Power Corporation and reduced the need for those dollars this year, so we cannot keep doing that. That’s just a comment. I’m happy to leave it at that.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Finance, deputy minister’s office, not previously authorized, $22.129 million. Total department, not previously authorized, $22.129 million. Agreed?
Agreed.
Agreed. Thank you. Moving on to page 7, Health and Social Services, administrative and support services, not previously authorized, $302,000. Community health programs, not previously authorized, $30,000; nursing inpatient services, not previously authorized, $1.023 million. Total department of Health and Social Services, not previously authorized, $1.355 million. Mr. Bouchard.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I had a question about the nursing inpatient services operation for the Hay River Health Centre. Obviously, I’m pleased to see some of the dollars for this new facility, but I know the demand and the request for a substantial amount more. Can the Minister elaborate on why those positions weren’t approved that we were asking for?
CHAIRPERSON (Mrs. Groenewegen):
Thank you, Madam Chair. There was a hard look taken at this, as there are a lot of our expenses as we look at our fiscal challenges, and it was determined that what is before the House is what the Hay River Hospital could make work with the resources that are available. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Mr. Bouchard.
Madam Chair, in the process here we’ve heard some stories of reports from the Hay River Health Centre or healthy authority that have a request for up to 33 positions. I think that was narrowed down to 21 and now has been approved for about 11.
I’m wondering if the Minister has any of the backup information on those positions and how we dwindled down from 33 to 11.
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. Minister Abernethy.
Thank you, Madam Chair. We were talking about a similar situation the other day with respect to Stanton and new facilities. When it comes to Hay River, when the building began construction the Hay River authority was tasked with figuring out how many positions would be required to properly run that facility. I think, as in most cases, there was the “I would love to have” list, the “absolutely need” list and the “I would like to have” list. The 32 was the dream list of adding programs, enhancing some services and doing some things slightly different. But given the mandate of the project, it wasn’t about expanding programs or adding new programs, so we were able to bring the list down a little bit as a result.
Then they provided a secondary list that included 21 positions, and some of these positions are absolutely required, but some of them need more justification and we won’t be able to justify that we actually need some of those positions until we actually get into the facility and run it for a while and can then clearly articulate the demand. Those positions were not supported through this process.
The positions that were identified, the 11 and a half additional positions plus and 3.15 relief, are essential to the operations of the new facility, given its size, the modification of how they’re providing programs. So, the 11.5 full time and the 3.15 relief are mandatory. The rest would have been nice to have, and given time, we may be able to justify that we actually need them, but we need to get into the facility first.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Mr. Bouchard.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I understand that explanation; I’m just wondering if there is any report or any kind of a briefing note that I can get from how we got from 32 to 21 down to 11, just so I know what the potential could have been, what the likes that we would like to have are and then what we actually got as far as positions and stuff like that. I know that’s been discussed between the department and the Hay River Health Authority and it’s been kind of a confidential document. But now that it’s been tabled today so now it’s open for discussion and it’s open for us to get that information, can I get that commitment? Thank you, Madam Chair.
Madam Chair, the wish list of positions was informal; it was never really submitted. As far as the other positions, I can provide the Member with the list of positions that are approved and we could put together some general terms of the types of positions that we need to continue to justify. It might take us a bit of time to be able to justify that. I don’t want to leave the impression that the positions that weren’t approved will be approved, because every position needs to go through a formal process and we must determine that they’re mandatory, that they’re needed to operate that facility, and we probably won’t be in a position to justify that until at least a year after the opening of the facility, to give us a chance to run it for a while and see what’s needed. So I can share the list of the types of positions, but I just want to be clear that it doesn’t guarantee that those positions are in fact necessary. It’s a “nice to have” list.
Yes, these are questions that came before our constituency meeting. Obviously, the department and health administrators typically meet and have those discussions without the interference of MLAs. Obviously, we’re wanting to get that information so that we can answer to the public the questions of where we went and how we got from a certain number to a different number to even a lesser amount. So, any information like that that the Minister can provide will give us way more ammunition for discussion. Thank you.
I’ll just repeat the same thing. I mean, we have the list of positions that have been approved, including the full-time and the relief, and those were deemed to be essential for opening the new facility and running the new facility. There were a number of other positions and many of them are, like, point five of a position or point 25 of a position. It was very difficult to provide a sound justification without actually being able to get into the facility to open it.
I’m happy to share some of those numbers with the Members from Hay River, but I do want to be clear that that does not mean that we have been able to justify that those positions are in fact necessary. We likely won’t be able to determine whether they’re necessary or not until we’ve been in that facility for up to a year operating to see where some of the pressures truly are. So, I don’t want to leave a false impression that those positions are real or are justified in any way, but I’m happy to share the list.
