Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I want to express some serious concern and caution to this Cabinet before us. I speak in favour of the Taltson Hydro Project, but I need to see some results. We’ve all heard about how great this project may be, and I certainly support any hydro expansion in our North. But when I talk to industry face to face, they show no interest in this project. They stall and don’t move to make any agreements with the Government of the Northwest Territories. The longer this process takes, there will be no diamond mine industry for them to extend the power to.
We need to have signed agreements somewhere and sometime soon for this Taltson project. The GNWT continues to spend millions of dollars preparing itself for this Taltson expansion, but without diamond mine agreements showing they are interested in buying this power. They tend to pay lip service to us and are they leading us on, like a carrot with a donkey.
Mr. Speaker, we must be very careful. I’ve had many expert constituents who are very familiar with the power providing services and they’ve told me that the capacity of the expanded Taltson is just not there to serve them as a customer. So who are we supplying the power to, Mr. Speaker? Mr. Speaker, they’re not interested. Why aren’t we seeing this? Because if they were, they would have ran in and signed those agreements immediately to say we would have long-term sustainable power.
Mr. Speaker, I’m all in favour of hydro development and expansion, but who are we expanding it for? Mr. Speaker, this government has worked to waive the PUB process and, yes, in all fairness, this side of the House does agree with that process, but, Mr. Speaker, I fear that we’ve all climbed into the barrel and we’re all going over the waterfall yet again on another project.
Mr. Speaker, with one mine on the tipping point now towards closure, again, who are we supplying the power for? Mr. Speaker, I’ve raised the issue of providing it to Avalon, which we know is going to be there for a least 100 years. That means they could be a customer two, three or maybe even four times the total capacity of what the existing diamond mines are there for.
So, Mr. Speaker, in short, we’ve all heard the term “show me the beef;” we’ve all heard the term “show me the money;” well, show me the signed agreements before we go too far on this project that we can’t come back. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Member for Tu Nedhe, Mr. Beaulieu.
