Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of our Power Corporation and the first one is very short. What has been the cost of our electricity rate review and NTPC review? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Minister responsible for the NWT Power Corporation, Mr. Roland.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The work on the Power Corp review was undertaken by the Executive. It wasn’t a direct initiative out of the Power Corporation. I’ll have to look in my notes, but I’ll get that information to him before the end of our session. Thank you.
Thank you. I appreciate the Premier’s commitment on that. Obviously the recommendations that our current report provides does very little to reduce the actual costs of power, which is what is ultimately required. You know, if we just keep putting the costs behind the scenes, what that does is remove the options we have for doing other things, providing services and other things of value to our people. So we can’t keep doing that. When will we actually see real reductions in the actual costs of electricity so that real savings can be provided? Thank you.
Thank you. Just further to the first question the Member had, the Power Corp review was in the neighbourhood of $200,000 to get that done. The initiatives we’ve undertaken under the electricity rate review does do substantial changes to the way we deliver power.
As the Member pointed out earlier, yes, the Member feels it’s a shuffling of the deck, but it is real change because if we did not do any changes, in fact, the Power Corporation would be coming forward today, in fact would have already been working at a general rate application that could go towards just what was raised by Member Bisaro as well when you talk about adjusting the prices and price shock.
This is not going to come as a result of the changes that we’re proposing. It is something that we’re faced with on a day-to-day basis within the existing system. That is why the government has decided, with support of our Members, to put $60 million into alternative energy development like run-of-the-river hydro, wind and biomass initiatives, and, yes, we’re disappointed as well that a number of these projects haven’t moved as fast as they have, and we’re putting the feet to the fire, in a sense, to move these along as much as we can with the time we have left. Thank you.
Thanks to the Minister for those remarks. I think we have some common ground there. I appreciate the $200K estimate for the Power Corporation review and I assume I’ll still be hearing about the electricity rate review costs.
As the Minister said, and I said in my question, we have not had real cost reductions yet and we all hope that there will be some eventually. What I want to know is, will we see any during the life of this Assembly, the four-year life of this Assembly. Thank you.
Thank you. That is our goal. In fact, every business plan since we identified that money for the Legislative Assembly, we push the departments to show progress, and not just internal progress but to get projects on the ground and put in place. So the wind turbine technology that’s been looked at has been delayed for a year. We were expecting it this year but it will go ahead in the next year, I believe. The area of biomass, we’re looking at, as we have already done, some exchanges for heat in a number of our facilities that will need replacement of boilers. As well, we’re still working with the Power Corporation for biomass for electricity generation. As well, as I’ve just been informed, the electricity rate review was in the neighbourhood of $550,000 to complete that work and that shows the cost of having to do that type of business in the Northwest Territories on large-scale consultation. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Roland. Final supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Just totalling these things up, that’s almost another million dollars. So we’re pretty close to an additional $10 million of subsidies this year and this is in addition to our apparently now routine at 10 to 12 million dollars per year and this is what I mean about we’re not really reducing costs and we’re removing options for services for our people. So I’d like to ask the Premier, during the life of this Assembly what community will actually have an electricity system with reduced costs. What community? Even one community.
I can name probably in the neighbourhood, let me see, how many thermal communities will go into that zone? About 22 communities. Now, I know the Member feels that’s just a shuffling of the deck, but that is real lower costs in our communities that will be spread out to the commercial base and to the customer base and the overall cost of living in our communities. Structurally as the Power Corporation and as the Government of the Northwest Territories, we know we need to increase our rate base in the sense of more people and more businesses in the Northwest Territories and to invest in these other alternatives requires cash that we have to, as the GNWT, invest in that system, because the Power Corporation, under the existing structure, is within a defined set of parameters that it can operate by. So we as the Government of the Northwest Territories have chosen to invest in alternative energies and we’re going to be doing that and putting some of these initiatives on the ground by the time this Assembly has concluded its business.
Thank you, Mr. Roland. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
