Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of Public Works and Services. Today I am following up on my Member’s statement.
The Energy Charrette held three months ago released its report a month and a half ago. One of its key findings was the urgent need for an energy efficiency act for the Northwest Territories. Getting this act in place needs to be a priority for us.
Will the Minister please confirm to the House that such an act is indeed being worked on by his officials for adoption during the life of this Assembly? Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister of Public Works, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The energy efficiency act was last amended in September of 2009. We were currently using it up until December 2014. There will be another review of the consolidated energy efficiency act.
Any time there are energy codes or anything, regulations in the act, then the Department of Public Works uses the current energy efficiency act. Thank you.
I didn’t hear that the Minister was going to put this act in place.
Again, the charrette was very clear in its view that the energy efficiency act would be a cornerstone towards a secure energy future, economic sustainability, environmental responsibility and, most importantly, reducing the cost of living. To now leave this important work for some review later on in the 18th Assembly would make a bad track record even worse.
Will the Minister commit to bringing this act forward for adoption during the life of this Assembly?
Public Works and Services will be involved in organizing a construction workshop here in Yellowknife that’s an annual thing. That will be occurring sometime in April. What we will be doing as one of the topics will be discussing the energy efficiency act. Actually, sorry, I believe that’s in the middle of this month is when the date of that workshop will be occurring.
Thank you for that information from the Minister. Glad to hear that’s happening. That’s part of regular business. Unfortunately, we’ve had lots of meetings during the last six or eight years like this and the Association of Communities has raised the need for an energy efficiency act and standards.
Will the Minister, again, commit to bringing forward this legislation for adoption by the 17th Assembly? Third time.
I’m not sure that the department would be in the position to complete a legislative proposal to look at the energy efficiency act for the Northwest Territories. Currently, we are using the energy efficiency act that is used across the country. We use the energy efficiency and national energy efficiency codes when we do our buildings and make sure that all of our buildings are under the National Energy Code. These are building that are designed that exceed most of the energy efficiency requirements across the entire country and within the Northwest Territories. I’m assuming that Nunavut and the Yukon also have highly energy-efficient units, but we can compare well to any of the national standards. We do exceed the national standards in energy efficiency. But to actually commit to bringing a legislative proposal to the Assembly on the energy efficiency act would be something that I would need to discuss with the people that will be putting the legislative proposal forward, because I don’t know the timing on that. I would not be able to commit, but I will be prepared to have that discussion with the department as soon as I was able to do so.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister’s response is entirely unacceptable. This has been raised repeatedly, and now through our expensive Energy Charrette – yet another one – it has been raised as the answer to a lot of our issues and providing benefits including addressing the cost of living.
How often does this need to be done? Now we’re sloughing it off again. The Minister is giving responses like need to discuss, we’ll try and discuss, don’t know what the timing would be like.
For goodness sake, this is long overdue. Long overdue. Lots of other jurisdictions in Canada have done this. It has been raised repeatedly. It has been raised in a workshop that we funded to get this done.
That response is entirely unacceptable. I have no further questions.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.
