Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am encouraged to see this government bring some focused attention to our energy issues in its recent Energy Priorities Framework. In particular, I see us beginning to act in ways that recognize the need to reduce energy costs through common sense activities like conservation, efficiency and switching to local and renewable sources.
The framework is full of excellent recommendations. I suggest that our people take a look at this. I see it is open for comments, and the government is obviously wanting feedback on it. I encourage people to do so.
However, significant gaps remain in this framework. Possibly the largest is transportation. Transportation is probably one of the largest sources of our rising cost of living. It’s fossil fuel intensive, and its greenhouse gas emissions are very high; there is no attention paid to it at all. Mr. Speaker, I think we need some real progressive work in this area. How are we going to move to a low greenhouse gas intensive way of getting around and transporting our goods and services?
Another one is the expertise. We don’t talk about expertise needed to implement a lot of these things, especially in our communities. We need some Aurora College programs that really get access, some technical and trades level expertise. We need an awards and recognition level to build this expertise in our communities.
People and business will willingly adopt many of these things if we have the feasibility studies, the payback times and the monitoring and demonstration to show them the things that actually work. Natural gas is recommended here, and I want to put up a big yellow flag on natural gas. Although it is a cleaner burning fuel, you have to burn a lot more of it. It is a fossil fuel that is rising steadily in cost just as the other fossil fuels are. So we need to be very cautions there. If we can, let’s leap right to a renewable energy source that will be provided locally and provide our local economies with some stimulus.
The industry is not really talked about, Mr. Speaker. We need some carbon neutral development here. We have the political and moral authority. Let’s get the critical approach going that we really require here.
Perhaps I could ask for unanimous consent to conclude my statement.
Unanimous consent granted.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you, colleagues. I think possibly the biggest thing we can do here is a thorough and complete review and possibly restructuring of the Northwest Territories Power Corporation. I think this is something we all know at heart. All our residents and constituents have been talking to us about this. We have some real opportunities here. People can start generating and delivering their own energy needs and contributing it to the grid through net metering and so on. We need some real progressive grassroots work there, so let’s get that done.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.
