Bob McLeod

The government already has a Petroleum Products Stabilization Fund and it has a maximum value of $1 million. This Petroleum Products Stabilization Fund is intended to temporarily compensate for differences between the purchased cost and the sale price of petroleum products. There is always a delay between the day when new fuel products are delivered to communities and the date when prices to customers are changed. So, we already have a Stabilization Fund. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The communities that the Member is referring to are those where we resupply once a year, and whatever the price is at that time we pass it on to the consumer. We have a revolving fund, and in a lot of the small communities when the revolving fund is in a surplus position, we reduce the costs, in a lot of cases, by 10 cents a litre. But, generally, we pass the cost on to the consumer. It’s very unusual for the gas prices to go down. Usually they go up. We’re still waiting here in Yellowknife for the gas prices to go down, so I think you’re referring to a temporary spike...

That is our intention, and we hope that through the people who we invite and all the participants that will in fact be the case. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It was our government’s intention to look at finishing the costing of these transmission lines, and also, at the same time, we had approached the federal government to increase our borrowing limit by $1 billion.

Our costing has determined that the cost of building a transmission line to join the Taltson and Snare Hydro systems are prohibitive and it’s in the neighbourhood of almost 100 percent more than we had originally forecasted. In our view, those costs are too prohibitive to allow us to go ahead.

I think we feel with a second Energy Charrette we have to take a different approach whereby we...

Of course, we can always look at every situation, but generally the market determines the price and we pass the cost on to the consumer. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The prices in the small communities will not change until the next resupply. So a year from now, when we do the resupply, at that time hopefully there will be lower prices in place. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, investing in the health and well-being of our people and our communities and building prosperity in the Northwest Territories is at the heart of this Assembly’s priorities, but it is not our priority alone. These goals are shared by many non-governmental organizations in our territory, by our citizens and by our employees.

The United Way NWT is one such organization and I am pleased today to stand as the United Way’s NWT Government of the Northwest Territories Workplace Campaign honourary chair to announce the kick-off of this year’s staff payroll campaign.

Mr. Speaker, the United...

The website update and advertising campaign began on May 20, 2014. It was highlighted in the sessional statement of May 28th. This was followed by a news release on May 29th and a very extensive advertising campaign in northern papers. We are planning to start another round of advertising and it’s scheduled to start in early November. As usual and as always, we work very closely with committee on all of these things.

What was outlined and discussed with committee was that we would put this legislation on the website and at the appropriate time we would gather all of the feedback and issues and concerns that were raised and that we would report back to committee with the intention that where there were areas of concern, we would deal with the specific legislation.

Just to be more specific, there have been 1,709 legislation review website views, 537 of those were on the pages that list the new legislation. Specific sites that were visited were the Oil and Gas Operations Act and the Petroleum Resources Act...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to recognize a constituent of Yellowknife South, Gayla Thunstrom, the first vice-president of the Union of Northern Workers; and also Jack Bourassa, regional executive vice-president north with the Public Service Alliance of Canada. Thank you.