Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. I’d like to follow up on my Member’s statement. It is obvious, and I mentioned it in my statement, that the government is not going to be able to meet the March 24th deadline date that they have for the court date and come forward to the judge with a solution, with an alternative solution to what’s been mandated by the court.
I’d like to know from the Minister at this point, knowing that negotiations are not happening either in Yellowknife or in Hay River, what’s next on the part of the department and the government? Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The Minister of ECE, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Initially the department has had an exploratory discussion with the Hay River District Education Authority, the Yellowknife Education District No. 1 and also Commission scolaire francophone to determine whether or not alternatives to the court order could be found in both communities.
These are the discussions that we’ve been having with both communities and the government has a responsibility to work with its partners to ensure that school facilities are used in the most cost effective and efficient way. The discussions we’ve been having since September until this last couple weeks have come to a stop. We’ve heard from both Yellowknife and Hay River. The next step will be to present that to my Cabinet colleagues this coming Thursday and then go from there. Mahsi.
Thanks to the Minister for hearing that it’s going to go to Cabinet this week. I want to talk about the timing. The Minister stated in answer to my colleagues last week that there are two options, we can proceed or we cannot proceed. The amount of time that’s involved so far, it has already been two years since the court decision and it was quite some time before that that both parties were in court, so the Commission scolaire has been looking for this accommodation for a very long time.
I’d like to know from the Minister, if there’s going to be a discussion at Cabinet this Thursday, how much longer are we looking at before there’s going to be some movement on capital planning for these two schools?
As I stated earlier, Hay River Commission and the YK No. 1 have all stated no to the school swap at this point, and I realize that YK No. 1 is still engaging, but March 24th has been a deadline because we still have to go through the appeal process and it is before us and that’s the next couple of weeks. What I’ll be presenting to the Cabinet colleagues will be what’s going to be happening for the next step, and it’s still to be seen. Those are the discussions that we need to have as a government. As part of the capital planning process, what should the next step be?
Thanks to the Minister. In the discussions with Cabinet, again, I want to try and get some sort of a timeline. Can the Minister give me any idea if Cabinet decides to go ahead and put these two schools into the capital planning process, when might we expect construction to start on one or both of these schools?
I can’t really speak to that at this point because we still have to make a decision to move forward on this particular subject. At the same time, there is an appeal process that’s happening as well. All those will come into play, but the specifics of the capital infrastructure, the discussion will be brought to the Cabinet colleagues and then we will let the Members know what will be the next phase of the approach.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final, short supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thanks, Mr. Speaker. To the Minister, at this point I’m a little surprised the Minister couldn’t give a ballpark estimate of time that it would take to go from planning to actual start of construction, but there we are.
To date, the government has incurred costs in terms of the legal costs in terms of the court costs. The Commission scolaire has also incurred costs. From my perspective as a Member of the Assembly and trying to keep costs of the government down to a dull roar, I’d like to know from the Minister what kind of costs we have incurred to date. I know we are going to incur more costs because it sounds as though we’re going to go forward with further appeals.
I’d like to know from the Minister how much has it cost us to date to take this legal action to try and avoid expanding these two schools.
I did already commit that last week to Member Bouchard, so I’ll definitely provide that detailed information to the Member.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
QUESTION 268-17(5):
GREENHOUSE GAS STRATEGY
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources. I’d like to note that our current Greenhouse Gas Strategy was released in 2011 and runs until 2015. According to the document, the GNWT is going to start work on a new Greenhouse Gas Strategy in 2014.
As we begin this work, could the Minister tell us how the success of the past plan will be evaluated?
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have been looking at the cost effectiveness of greenhouse gas reduction initiatives. We’re going to hit the targets we have set for ourselves. We will review those. We will look at all the work that’s been done in the intervening time, the development. We have an extensive amount of work looking at the cost effectiveness, and that will be one of the key determinants as we look at renewal.
Thanks to the Minister. I hope it will be more than that. Both the current Greenhouse Gas Strategy and the relatively new Energy Plan are focused almost entirely on the supply of electricity to our communities and a little bit on heating, yet they all start with graphs showing that our greenhouse gas emissions primarily come from transportation and industry.
How can we claim that our strategy was successful when it did not even address the problem?
When we look at the areas that were targeted, it was successful. The Member is correct; the area of transportation is a big area that has to be addressed and it is a source of major greenhouse gas emissions.
Indeed, transportation is one. The other one I said was industry, which is probably even bigger, and we all know there are flares happening right now in the Sahtu. Perhaps the Minister could tell us what emissions are coming out of those flares.
As of the 1st of April, the GNWT will have new authorities under devolution. This should give us some new tools to deal with greenhouse gases in these sectors that we typically ignore right now.
Will the next Greenhouse Gas Strategy include actions based on our new toolbox? For example, will we be looking at regulating emissions from industry using water licences or air emissions permits?
As the Member talked about flares, he didn’t touch on the success of the Diavik wind farm, which is a major industrial achievement in terms of hitting our targets. In terms of the question that the Member asked with our new authorities and the new toolbox that, yes, as we move forward we’re going to be looking at our new world post-devolution and what opportunities do we have, what areas do we need to look at that we haven’t considered in the past for authority reasons or because we were not in a position to before, so on a go-forward basis, yes.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister. Good to hear that. The previous Greenhouse Gas Strategy massively overestimated the level of industrial development that would take place in the NWT and now, of course, the Minister claims the lack of development is a success in reducing missions. How to preplan success.
Will the next Greenhouse Gas Strategy take a more rigorous approach and list the emissions reductions that we aim to achieve from each action in the strategy?
The Member, once again, sort of underestimates and doesn’t recognize the significant investment that Diavik did make and it was very important in terms of achieving targets. We will continue to try to aim high. We could aim low and promise low and over-deliver, but we’ll have that discussion with the committee on a go-forward basis as we look at renewal of the Greenhouse Gas Strategy.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
