Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Premier and they’re about the high cost of living today.
The group of citizens in Yellowknife, and perhaps across the Territories, are working through electronic means as well as individually and together have had a lot of press and a lot of profile. I certainly appreciate their initiative in discussing this and trying to come up with solutions.
I’m wondering what the government is doing to recognize this initiative and meet with this group of people. Have we met with them, made contact with them, and offered our perspectives and willingness to work with them?
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Premier, Mr. Roland.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Although we’ve heard something of discussion out there about a group who has gone on-line to raise concerns about the high cost of energy there has been no request made to Members of this Cabinet nor, as is my understanding, to Regular Members as well.
I hope we don’t have to wait until somebody asks us to do something when we see a need out there. Obviously there’s been considerable press, as I’ve mentioned: radio coverage, newspaper coverage, electronic coverage. I was asking what initiative we have taken to step out and meet these people halfway. Perhaps the response I got means that we haven’t done that and I would ask if the Premier would be willing to get our government to actually do that, to recognize the citizen effort here and offer to meet with them.
The record will show that we’re not waiting for a request to do anything about this. In fact, previous governments have been dealing with the issue of the high cost of living in our communities in quite a number of ways. You can look at almost every department within the Northwest Territories where we are taking initiatives to try to help with the cost of living. Whether that is a fuel subsidy for seniors, property tax issues for seniors or income support basket for residents, our housing program helps deal with that. This government itself is looking at alternative energies and investing the dollars to look at alternative energies to help stabilize our costs or even reduce them. We’re taking quite a number of initiatives as a government to help with the cost of living issues in our communities. When it comes to the one group alone, no, we haven’t gone out to them. There are many groups out there we meet with on an ongoing basis to deal with the core need or high cost of living issues.
I appreciate that response from the Premier. I’m wondering what this government is doing to actually reduce the cost of living beyond buying out a reduction in the cost of living and putting it onto the back of our taxpayers indirectly, sort of hiding those costs in a way. Not that I don’t appreciate those programs; we need them as part of our strategy. But what are we doing to actually reduce the costs of services to our people and the cost of living directly?
This government has made huge investments in looking at alternative energies, that being some of the biggest cost drivers. When we looked at the overall impacts, two factors come to the forefront around the cost of living and that is transportation and energy costs. So we’re looking at expanding, for example, hydroelectricity to smaller hydro potential initiatives in our communities. So we’re pursuing that. We’re looking at wind energy. We’re looking at a number of other factors; biomass. But those are yet to come and have the potential to reduce the cost of living or stabilize it in our communities. The other area is, for example, on our winter roads or ice crossings, when we try to speed the acceleration to build up the ice crossings so that the trucks can get across and deliver goods to our communities
All of these, Mr. Speaker, require an infusion of cash to help makes things happen across the Territories and that still costs us. Many governments across this country look at subsidies for individuals to help offset. Even in Manitoba where there’s hydroelectricity, everybody pays the same cost, but we know that the cost of delivering service in remote communities is offset by those who live in the larger centres just because of the population base. So aside from what we’re doing, the energy review that’s happened, we’re working on our response and working with Members to come forward on that to help stabilize the cost of living and energy in our more remote communities. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Roland. Your final supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Once again, I appreciate the comments from the Premier. He named a lot of good programs that I’m hoping actually get on the ground and start to reduce our costs. But the phrase that caught my attention is yet to come. We’ve been talking about a lot of things. We’ve been planning a lot of things. Let’s just pick hydro, for example, I think eight, nine, 10 years we’ve been planning small hydro, small hydro, Mr. Speaker, in Lutselk'e and Whati. Yet, here we are spending more money and time thinking about it. When will people actually see these things on the ground in a way that starts reducing our costs? I recognize there are front-end costs to that, but we can’t keep studying these things to death, Mr. Speaker. When will it happen on the ground? Thank you.
At times it can be frustrating in trying to move things along, but in our style of working with our community governments and aboriginal leadership we have to work through a process. Hopefully, on the Lutselk'e project, for example, the mini-hydro there, we began to move that ahead at a faster pace. Whati is another area where we’re working on run-of-the-river technology. Some of the decisions that have to be made though are should we be looking at a bigger expansion or leave it to the community size when it comes to the hydro pieces. Biomass, when we look at replacement of diesel generators is the time to look at a natural conversion of those things so that we’re not having to duplicate the efforts or come up with additional cash when things are as they are. The yet-to-come benefits are the ones where those hydro projects are in or, for example, our runway expansions and our ice road technology improves. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Member for Kam Lake, Mr. Ramsay.
