Bob McLeod

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...

Certainly the low water and prohibitive cost estimates for building transmission lines, we don’t know if this low water will continue. This is a first time ever, the lowest in 65 years. Generally, the hydro reservoirs are filled with water every year with the runoff from the spring, or the freshet as they call it. The annual rainfall this year for the three months of May, June, July, I think we had a thimbleful of rain. So I don’t know if this will be continuing on an ongoing basis, but certainly it made us recognize that we had to find a better way to reduce our reliance on hydro facilities...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We learned a lot from the first Energy Charrette. We had a very good discussion and the outcomes of that was the Energy Action Plan, where this government invested more resources into reducing our reliance on fossil fuels. We came up with a 20-year vision for power production and basically it looked at joining up the two hydro zones by building transmission lines and also looking to have inter-ties with the South so we could access cheaper power, and as demand grows, we can expand our hydro facilities. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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.

When you talk to the industry where bids were accepted for work in the Sahtu that have decided to work elsewhere, when we talked to the industry, they indicated they were collecting baseline information. So if they ever decide to come back north, they will have necessary baseline information that will reflect the best practices of drilling and that before they actually do the drilling, in this case we’re looking at trying to determine the size of the oil and gas reserves that are there, that they will have all the necessary information when and if they do decide to come back. Right now there...

In the Northwest Territories we are working on fracking regulations which will reflect best practices of the industry. We’ve also inherited guidelines from the National Energy Board which deals with hydraulic fracking. In the Northwest Territories’ regulatory system, the appropriate land and water board conducts preliminary screening and our government respects the decisions of the land and water boards. Also, we continue to assess how we best use our new authorities in the Northwest Territories.

I’m very confident that when the draft regulations come out, it will be discussed widely and we...

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.