Caroline Cochrane

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As Members may be aware, the Energy Plan just expired at the end of March 2016, so we're just taking part in this process. I'm presuming that we'll begin this process within this fiscal year and hoping to be finished by the end of the fiscal year. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The piling is done, like I had just stated. The structural material was just shipped to the community two weeks ago, so that's in there. The remainder of the material for the facility will be sent in once the ferry is in operation. We're expecting in the first week of June or so, when the ferry is operating. We're still on schedule for the completion date of November 2016 and we're really monitoring it to make sure that it does get finished by that date.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. A couple of the issues that were brought by the community actually in Fort McPherson with the seniors facility, one was the location. We've done many, many consultations within the community and talked to them about the facility, the location, the site, and the community seemed to be in adherence to the proposed plan; then just a couple months ago we got some complaints saying they weren't. We went back actually on April 6th. We had another meeting in the community and again, we talked about the location. Within that meeting Chief William Koe confirmed that consultation...

The Department of Public Works and Services is always willing to negotiate with the federal government to see if there are resources that we can utilize to assist within the Northwest Territories. Specifically with Kakisa, we've had some positive work with looking at extending the transmission line from Enterprise to Kakisa and to Fort Providence. Of course that would take significant financial resources to do that. At this point we're actually trying to negotiate with the federal government to see if they would provide support for that project.

We're always willing to work within the public, and so I'm hoping that we'll utilize the MLAs as well and keep them informed and utilize them to actually reach out to their constituents and to provide support within the Energy Plan that we're looking at.

We don't perceive any more additional costs because now we're on track. Of course, there was additional costs with the engineering work that had to be done to make sure that the piles were safe. As a Minister, my priority is to make sure that anything that we're building is done structurally sound and safe, so I have no problem paying for the engineering costs that it did take to make sure that we're ready to go.

I believe the question is what caused the delays? Again, as I had spoken before, there were some issues regarding the water, and so we had to make sure that the piles were engineered safely. We just completed that work. Now that is in place, we're ready to roll.

Through the RFP process, the successful proponents were from the South Slave, Beaufort-Delta, and the Sahtu. I can't identify right now, where they brought up these units from, although the successful proponents were from northern companies.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The tenders were put out by request for proposal, and proponents came in, people from the North and from wherever, came in and they submitted applications for this. We looked at the rates that were provided through stick-built and the rates that were provided by northern firms to bring up the mobile homes, and the 30 per cent was identified through that process. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I do apologize. Still I'm suffering from the flu so my brain is a little bit foggy still. The NWT Housing Corporation did try to increase it. It started at $25,000. It was increased to $50,000 to try to get more northern businesses. We still didn't have enough uptake with even increasing it to $50,000. Currently, though, we are negotiating. We are talking with northern manufacturing firms to see if we can get them within the next request for proposals that are coming out in the spring. We're trying to get them to actually be able to come forward and actually be more...