Bob Bromley

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to reply to the opening address with comments regarding progress towards creation of an Anti-Poverty Strategy.

Inside the Government of the NWT, progress had been very disappointing. Members are well aware of the call for an Anti-Poverty Strategy from 29 organizations including the City of Yellowknife and a who’s who of the NWT’s social justice advocacy groups. It’s perhaps unprecedented to see so many major groups come together with one voice on one issue calling so loudly for action by the territorial government. This is grassroots action at its finest.

Regular...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is obviously a fundamental clause. It provides some guidance on how the fund will be managed. I just want to note that the public spoke very clearly and fairly consistently on this aspect and thought that there should be arm’s length administration of the fund and that it should not be under the trusteeship of the Financial Management Board. An arm’s length agency could indeed report to the Legislative Assembly and could be subject to verification by an independent auditor. This would allow for and promote public involvement in the administration and guiding...

I appreciate the Minister’s willingness to look at this. I think he brought forward some good points. I think a suite of energy sources is probably the way to go. We need to transition to a greater and greater proportion of renewable or at least low-carbon sources. I think the Minister is well aware of that. I’d like to note that in those communities there’s already been feasibility projects going, for example, for a pellet manufacturing plant out of Simpson, geothermal, hydro projects and so on that the Minister himself has been involved in. Given his comments again and this recognition of...

I appreciate those comments from the Minister. It’s good to get some of that history. I guess and I suspect others have tried to get a good discussion going on a resource tax during this term and I regard that to mean some research done and some considerations presented to us by Cabinet on what would be involved, what the difficulties are and so on. I’m wondering if the Minister is planning to raise this in the transition document, and resource taxes are just my sort of pet idea, but how is the Minister going to profile this in the transition document of the idea of getting some dollars into...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of energy, Minister Bob McLeod. It follows up on a statement from the other day on the conversion of communities to gas energy systems.

Norman Wells and Inuvik are up against the wall with their natural gas energy systems and, of course, we know the high cost of converting communities, yet we appear to be going down the road of committing new communities to the inevitable end of non-renewable energy supplies. Feasibility studies have been prepared on the conversion of Tulita, Fort Simpson, and Fort Good Hope to natural gas as the...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to follow up on a few points, actually. The first one is people have made reference to the amount of time that the funds will remain in a sealed account gathering value, assuming we get some dollars in there. When this idea was first put forward, I know we had lots of discussions and I think there was general agreement that this would be an intergenerational fund and should be set aside for at least 30 years. Yet when the bill came back to us, Mr. Chair, I was startled to see that funds were put aside for only 10 years. I see committee has bumped that up to 20...

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Minister Miltenberger.

I think it’s good that the public be aware of clause 4 and be prepared to take advantage of the opportunities that presents, as well as the policies that committee is recommending.

I just would like to comment on the discussion that has taken place about the various existing heritage funds. There are three that I know have been thrown out in public consultation and that many of us have referred to all of us. The first one, of course, is the Norway Pension Fund. It’s essentially the same thing referred to as a heritage fund. Its purpose is to invest parts of the large surplus generated by the...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m in favour of this bill in general. I don’t think it’s the best thing we could have done, but I think it’s a very good start.

Really the issue at hand is our non-renewable resources in particular are being shipped out of the Northwest Territories typically with very little value added despite our best efforts, and at really an incredible rate, and these are some of our most finite resources. We’ve learned from others that if we’re going to ensure intergenerational benefits, it must be done explicitly and with much forethought, and a Heritage Fund seems like a really...

That was exactly what I wanted to know, that there is an opportunity for an economy of scale by joining other jurisdictions. In this case, I’m curious to learn that Alberta is near to that and they’re obviously our neighbour, the one we do the most business with. Is there potential, given the timing of this legislation and their action underway, that we could hook up with Alberta in their possible pending action? Thank you.