Merci, Monsieur le President. My questions are for the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment. Earlier today, I talked about this report from Alternatives North that provides a roadmap to 100 per cent renewable energy by 2050. I am just wondering, as the department is going out doing its consultations on this energy plan, will that sort of perspective, of 100 per cent renewable energy, will that be reflected in what the consultations come up with? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The report is being used along with input from other stakeholders across the Northwest Territories. We will take that report and use it for input for our energy strategy and development for what we need to bring forward for the Northwest Territories to get off of diesel in the long term. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I appreciate the response from the Minister. It sounds like that will be one of the scenarios that will be looked at in this NWT energy plan, to get us completely off non-renewable energy. That is great to hear that. I am just wondering, can the Minister give us an update when we can expect to have this energy plan presented to this side of the House? I understand there are still some consultations going on. The latest one is March 8th in Hay River, but when would this side of the House and the public start to see some results?
The consultation that is going on presently, we have two communities to finish up. We have Hay River and Fort Simpson, I believe, and then we are also probably going to try to meet with Behchoko and the Tlicho government. Once this stuff is all pulled together, we will put a report together and probably release it later on this year.
There are, I think, about 10 months between now and the end of the year. I was hoping you could be a little bit more specific here. In this plan, will there be a schedule for implementation? Is there going to be a budget, some resources identified to help carry it out and some public reporting? Is that the sort of thing that we can expect to see inside the plan?
The short answer is yes. Those are the sorts of things that we will be looking at doing when we pull out this energy strategy and climate change strategic framework.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Frame Lake.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Great to hear that, and I really look forward to the next budget having some investment into renewable energy beyond what we have already. Can the Minister tell me, is part of that energy plan going to be a carbon tax or carbon pricing system for the Northwest Territories? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
We are still working on those sorts of things. There are all kinds of input from these themes going around to the communities from how we are going to support more biomass for communities, portability of energy moving forward, how do we implement some of these things going forward. Also, we have to look at what kind of federal investment we are going to get moving forward, and we are looking forward to the budget coming forward with the liberal government. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Nunakput.
