Bob Bromley

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am encouraged to see this government bring some focused attention to our energy issues in its recent Energy Priorities Framework. In particular, I see us beginning to act in ways that recognize the need to reduce energy costs through common sense activities like conservation, efficiency and switching to local and renewable sources.

The framework is full of excellent recommendations. I suggest that our people take a look at this. I see it is open for comments, and the government is obviously wanting feedback on it. I encourage people to do so.

However, significant gaps...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to begin by reiterating that this idea came from the people, and I’m just one of the vehicles here bringing this forward. It has been stressed that this is a preventative and creative approach. It has got an element of fairness to it — small communities and so on, the potential to be revenue neutral. There is absolutely no duplication with the Food Mail Program.

I have to comment briefly on some of the spurious arguments I have heard on that. There are about half of our communities that actually have the food mail service. But this program could apply to...

WHEREAS the Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories has set the goal of having a healthy and educated population and has agreed to work with families, communities and schools to improve the physical and mental well-being of our youth;

AND WHEREAS the Government of the Northwest Territories provides subsidies for goods and services that cost too much for ordinary northerners to realistically bear;

AND WHEREAS the increasing costs of living in the NWT make it more and more difficult for many northerners to provide the basic necessities for their families;

AND WHEREAS milk is an essential...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thanks for the comments on that. I realize that they are narrowly economic, but I think we have many more win-win situations we could find here.

My final question is on the Power Corporation. Would the Minister commit to leading this government and doing a comprehensive and thorough review of the Northwest Territories Power Corporation, their work on the energy front, the possibility of restructuring and so on, to address many of the fundamental issues that we hear so much about from our constituents?

Mr. Speaker, thank you to the Minister for those comments. I don’t want to detract from the Energy Priorities Framework, because I think there is some very good stuff here. I think the Minister has pointed at the home environment and buildings. There are some very good things happening there. But as he has pointed out, transportation is the biggest source of many of our problems with our cost of living. So I’m hoping that some real outside the box thinking can be done there, some fundamental solutions.

One of the things I found missing was the development of local expertise on implementing some...

Mr. Speaker, I would like to follow up on my Member’s statement on the Energy Priorities Framework by asking the Minister who is the lead for energy about why transportation was completely missed out here. We spend hundreds of millions of dollars every decade subsidizing highways, highway transport, and costs are continuing to soar. Greenhouse gas emissions are continuing to increase. What are we doing outside the box? Why aren’t we thinking outside the box, trying to lower our costs, coming up with low intensity greenhouse gas emission ways of transport and some long term solutions? Thank you...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you, colleagues. I think possibly the biggest thing we can do here is a thorough and complete review and possibly restructuring of the Northwest Territories Power Corporation. I think this is something we all know at heart. All our residents and constituents have been talking to us about this. We have some real opportunities here. People can start generating and delivering their own energy needs and contributing it to the grid through net metering and so on. We need some real progressive grassroots work there, so let’s get that done.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just very briefly I wanted to add my voice of accolade here to Ms. Bisaro and Mrs. Trudel and to those who helped put this together.

We heard earlier today about some of the waste recovery proposals the Minister of ENR is proposing. This is a full cost accounting approach. We know that our food now comes from thousands of kilometres away. To have that energy expended and the cost.... A lot of that food going to waste is crazy in today’s world. So very briefly, all kudos, and I’m very happy to see this bill go forward.

Mr. Chairman, I just wanted to follow up on my first line of questioning, for which I benefited from the questions and responses from my colleagues and the Ministers involved. Given the expected completion date of the education plan — two weeks from today, as we have heard twice from the Minister of Education — and given that Public Works and Services is ready to start their planning right away, as we’ve heard from Mr. Aumond, and assuming that there will be some obvious renos that could be done that are either not affected or minimally affected by the education plan, can we at least assume...

Thank you for the reminder of that earlier discussion. My impression is that the renovation would go on over the course of several years, perhaps three or more, and that they would be a fairly large suite of things given the state of the school, some of which would involve, you know, a thorough marriage between the physical maintenance of the building or renovation and the education plan but some of which surely would not. So I would like to ask a little more specifically: are there some significant renovations outside of that which would require an education plan that could be done and for...