Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, on a recent trip to Scandinavia, which got a lot of public press…
Oooh.
I think it’s very important to realize this was not a junket and I think we have to face the reality that the Northwest Territories and the potential we have for the forest sector, some 30 million hectares of forest that we have around our communities, down the valley and, more importantly, this is a resource that has been harvested in the Northwest Territories by aboriginal people for thousands of years, not only as a heat source but, more importantly to provide them with building goods and services, from their log homes to their boats and also developing our communities.
Mr. Speaker, I think it’s important to realize that as Northerners, we do have an obligation in the Kyoto Protocol, what effect is seen by climate change, and do something different than the dependency we have on fossil fuels in the Northwest Territories, from generating our power to heating our homes to running our public infrastructure. We do have to deal with this issue seriously, and seriously look at the policies, procedures and programs that this government has and enact policies that were established in Scandinavia some 30 years ago where they are totally not dependent on fossil fuels. They use all the biomass products within their jurisdictions, and more important is the $2 billion industry to these countries.
Again, Mr. Speaker, I think it’s important to realize the potential this has by way of economic development for our communities. We have to realize the sawmills we generate in our communities, where most of us growing up in the Northwest Territories had sawmills in our communities. More importantly, to use the log industry and work with those communities that have developed a sawmill, such as Jean Marie, and use the wood products and byproducts that they have in that community to establish biomass systems to heat their schools, to run their power plants. This potential is there. It’s there for us to use and, more importantly, to make the effort and the attempt to move forward.
Mr. Speaker, we spend $15 million a year dealing with forest fires in the Northwest Territories. There are byproducts from these forest fires that can be used to consider biomass, which most people consider dead trees. The same thing with regard to cutlines. We have cutlines in the Northwest Territories…
Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.
---Unanimous consent granted.
Mr. Speaker, as we all know, with industrial development in the Northwest Territories such as cutlines and the possibility of a pipeline down the Mackenzie Valley, they are going to be destroying trillions of board feet of lumber that could be used for biomass and industry. We have to be serious, as government, as Northerners, that we have to stop wastage of our resources in the Northwest Territories and use, reuse and find ways to reduce the cost of living in our communities by way of our energy costs and our dependence on fossil fuels. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Krutko. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
