Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Premier. I’d like to follow up on the discussion that he had with my colleague Mrs. Groenewegen yesterday on power and hydro grids and so on.
As we know, we’re approaching 25 to 30 cents, possibly greater – we have stipulated increases in our rates in this part of the Northwest Territories – whereas provincial rates are in the order of six or eight cents. I’m very disappointed that the Premier would encourage the impression that the Northwest Territories has any potential for selling power to the South. He mentioned the other big markets down there in Saskatchewan, BC and Alberta. Given our costs, and even with larger-scale developments, we could only sell power at a huge loss.
Would the Premier agree that it’s very irresponsible to leave the impression with the public that we would be selling power to the South and that this impression should be corrected? Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Premier, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wouldn’t think we’re misleading anybody. We are looking at a plan. We are looking at options and we have excess power. We are working on a business case. If the business case presents that it’s feasible to export power after we’ve looked at the northern demands first, then it’s something that we are looking at.
We could use all the extra power ourselves. Economically that’s been demonstrated. For some reason we’re not; we’re using fossil fuels instead. Again, the Premier did not refute the fact that we have 30 cent power, they have six to eight cents power. We are not going to be selling, so this is a very irresponsible position to take.
In contrast, and I’ve talked to people in the Hydro Corporation and the NWT Power Corporation and they agree with that, of course. Has the Premier talked to those people in the Hydro Corporation and the NWT Power Corporation? Mahsi.
I speak to them all the time. I speak to the Minister responsible for the NWT Power Corporation all the time, and we are all working on developing a business case. We’re also developing the technical information to back it up.
Thank you. I’m glad to hear the Minister is talking to our people. Building transmission lines is extremely expensive. ATCO, during the most recent Taltson fiasco, came up with about $750,000 per kilometre. Now we’re talking about building grids to the South at that rate. So that puts us in the many millions of dollars, in addition to our 30 cent kilowatt hour of power cost, so now we add that to that cost to sell our power to the South. Clearly, that’s not about to happen.
I’d like to ask the Premier what the cost of a transmission line to the South would be. What are the estimates?
That’s what we’re doing, is developing a business case. I expect that would be somewhere in the order of 500 to 700 million dollars. It would all depend on whether there’s a business case or not.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I hope that seals the deal. I hope this does correct the impression for the public.
The last question I have, very briefly, is: Has the Premier informed our public that if we do in fact connect to these grids and import power, that we will be importing primarily coal power, the dirtiest possible fuel and the most inefficient use of fuel to generate electricity and the most damaging of the fuels to climate change? Has the Premier informed the public about that aspect as well?
I don’t follow his logic, but I’m not surprised that he’s not supportive of developing hydro, which is a very clean renewable resource. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.
