Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Not by collusion, I want to speak to the electricity rate review and the good news. Minister Bob McLeod was down to Hay River on the weekend and spoke to the NWT Association of Communities, and the news about the power rates was well received and the people are looking forward very much to those next couple of years of some relief on their power bills.
We need to view that two years as a window of opportunity to get very serious with that substantial amount of money that we have set aside as a government to consider green energy initiatives. One of those is the whole idea of biomass. I’m happy and proud of the government that they have been moving toward pellet boilers in some of the capital infrastructure in the South Slave and even here in Yellowknife. We only have this money set aside for a certain amount of time and we need to make sure it is well used.
I have characterized this temporary offset that will help with the cost of living over the next two years as just a time in which we need to take that $60 million and literally do an end run on some of the things that are costing the people of the Northwest Territories so much in our communities. That is in the area of energy.
We have an opportunity with the vegetation and inventory of trees in the Northwest Territories to create a pellet mill here to make pellets. We have a transportation infrastructure in Hay River to even ship those pellets down the Mackenzie River to other communities. The inventories are there. The capital, I believe, is there and the money that we’ve set aside. And we need to find a proponent, maybe an operator, we need to find a location. Might I suggest it should be Hay River? We have people there who are already very experienced in the sawmill business. The product that would be turned into pellets could be a by-product of the harvesting that would be done and the loggable, sizable trees that could be turned into lumber.
We have a great opportunity before us, but I would like the energy and heat created from the $60 million to be more than the BTU created by the burning up of the many studies that we could waste it on.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Colleagues, before I proceed with the orders of the day I’d like to draw your attention to the visitor’s gallery and to the presence of Mr. Bruce McLaughlin, former Member of this House and representative from the riding of Pine Point.
