Merci, Monsieur le President. Earlier this sitting, my colleague from Yellowknife North gave a statement promoting the virtues of electric bicycles, or ebikes, and questioning the government's level of support for their introduction. I'll add to that endorsement today with some further thoughts received from a resident.
The main point is that the very limited $10,000 devoted to ebikes compared to electrical vehicles fails to put the money where it will do the most good. Electric cars are great but ebikes have a more significant environmental benefit, don't require expensive charging infrastructure, are being purchased by northerners in much greater quantities, and are more suitable for our northern climate because the batteries can be removed and kept warm inside a building. The proposed limitation of rebates for ebikes to people living in hydro zones fails to recognize the immense environmental benefits provided by ebikes. Calculations indicate that a full charge on a typical ebike would use less than 1 kilowatt hour of electricity and require about 0.3 litres of diesel at the power plant. An average truck will burn more than that amount in ten minutes of idling, Mr. Speaker. By the time a driver warms their vehicle in the winter, it's already consumed more diesel than the power plant would to fully charge an ebike. So ebikes make sense in nonhydro communities. So if someone charges an ebike in a dieselpowered community and uses that bike rather than a passenger vehicle, the emissions reductions are even more significant. We should expand this program to the entire NWT.
Other the opportunity will be reprofiling of funds within Arctic Energy Alliance. My understanding is that there will be $10,000 for ebike rebates, $20,000 for ontheland evehicles such as snowmobiles and quads, and $200,000 for ecars and charging stations. There are not a lot of proven designs for ontheland evehicles now so we should ensure that money can be reprofiled to the ebike fund, when demands exceeds the mere $10,000. I'll have questions for the Minister of Infrastructure regarding the ebike rebate program.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Frame Lake. Members' statements. Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes.
