Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Welcome back. It’s good to be back in the House. We only have seven short days here, so we have to make them count.
I am a firm believer, as an MLA, to giving credit where credit is due. We have failed as a government as the 17th Assembly in one area that I am going to talk about today, and that is coming up with a broad Energy Strategy. Fail.
In the absence of a clearly thought out strategy that considers our environment, our economy and our cost of living, this government will just keep acting in a reactive mode, running willy-nilly. Like when we had to come up with a Cabinet meeting when they went someplace to have a meeting and they came back and said, “We’re going to throw $20 million into the fact that we have low water and high diesel costs.” This is the way this government has reacted to everything related to this. Let’s just throw more money at it.
We had $60 million set aside at the beginning of this Assembly to actually do something creative and responsible when it came to energy, but we have literally blown all of that. We have failed to look at the creative opportunities to do things in the Northwest Territories for Northerners in the area of energy. Here we are now a few short months until the end of our term, we’ve got a Cabinet that seemingly is going to run willy-nilly on this energy piece and people are going to use this opportunity for whatever political bucket list they may have hidden in their drawer somewhere and I’m not very happy about it, Mr. Speaker.
I have been in this Legislature a long time, and without divulging any confidentiality, let me tell you I had the opportunity to sit through a noon hour briefing today which, bar none, wins the prize, top marks for the least substance on an extremely important issue that I have ever been involved in. It’s an absolute insult to the 11 Members on this side of the House that this government, if they have a plan, are not willing to share it or discuss it or take it out for public consultation to the people of the Northwest Territories.
So, we just keep spending our money fixing crisis to crisis management, just fixing problems as we go along. We are never going to get out ahead of the problem. Mr. Speaker, I’m not very happy about it. Like I said, I can’t divulge confidential information that has been shared in committee, but this is something that we need to talk about. This is important to the people of the North, that we have a broad Energy Strategy.
We had two energy charrettes, and now, just about when the 17th Assembly is over, we’re going to have a response from the government for those energy charrettes. It’s too important a topic.
I may not be here in the 18th Assembly, but this is something we get a failed mark on. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.
