Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s a pleasure to be back here in the Legislative Assembly. It seems like we were gone for a long time.
Mr. Speaker, today I wanted to just touch on a few items related to devolution. The Premier has highlighted some of these benefits in his sessional statement that he just provided. He’s talked about jobs and he’s talked about the control of land and water and resources. I think we need to keep our eye on the big picture here. The revenues from royalties and the positions that will transfer to the North are, of course, a wonderful benefit and we’d like to see more of those in the regions than may be currently contemplated. We need to focus on the fact that we will have the control over the land and the resources. We need something to happen in the South Slave, and we have looked and talked about, for so many years, the potential for development of our hydro resources. It’s a renewable resource. We look at the Taltson Dam, for example, which would be a very, very key project for the benefit of the people in the South Slave and for the whole territory, and we have kind of danced around that topic of the expansion of the Taltson for a very long time.
I’m hoping that devolution will be a part of us being able to take a bolder stand. We wasted $17 million trying to figure out how to send the excess power and newly generated power to diamond mines that had a 25-year lifespan and we never had a real clear indication the diamond mines even wanted it, but we spent $17 million doing that.
We have in northern Alberta, obviously a very ready market for hydro, clean energy. The Prime Minister of Canada stood here in the Great Hall of this Legislative Assembly and talked about natural gas and the clean energy that could come from the Northwest Territories. The export of that hydro power could contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and to a cleaner environment, not just for the North but for the whole globe.
I’m hoping that we’ll get our eye on the big picture. We have many opportunities for development. Obviously, if we were going to hang our hats on how many jobs we’re going to get in the South Slave from devolution, we would probably be sorely disappointed. I mean, we’ll see what rolls out in the future, but at this point, we’re not exactly jumping up and down for joy about that. But let’s look at the bigger picture; let’s look at the higher level.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.
