Daryl Dolynny

Agreed. We will commence just after a short break. Thank you.

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I’d like to call Committee of the Whole to order. What is the wish of committee? Mr. Menicoche.

The Minister is kind of leading into my third question, which is the overarching complement of what’s called your Emergency Action Plans. The Minister did give the number, I believe, of 18.

Can the Minister indicate to me as to who is actually doing those Emergency Action Plan assessments? Is it the communities themselves or is it the fire marshals or a designate from the government who are doing those?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The weather is getting colder outside and I think it’s only prudent that we take a look at all our emergency actions both in-house and community and as a territory. For that, today my questions will be for the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs on the theme of emergency preparedness.

My first question is: Back in April of 2012 while we were doing the business plans and main estimates, the Minister of MACA reported that seven community governments had completed their fire assessments and that at March 31st of this year that number increased to 24. Through a...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I find it odd that we spent over $60 million in the last number of years on so many different energy initiatives enticing the average person to go out there and put some solar panels, put pellet stoves in, and when we got an ability as a government, we’ve got an ability as someone who could actually give those incentives, we give them back at cost. The profit now is being made by the utility company, and the person who is actually coming forward and making those strong initiatives, they’re now losing out money. What’s the incentive?

Again, I’ll ask the Minister here...

Again, this is a great initiative. I think what we’re going to need to find out in the House here is, what exactly is this so-called incentive of putting power back into the so-called grid with a net metre? Can the Minister indicate how much money, if I was to make this large investment, $30,000 to put solar panels onto my house and I want to put power back into the grid, how much money am I going to get per kilowatt hour by putting that in? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think many people are quite curious and I’ll definitely have to ask this last question. As we’ve talked about the final completion, we heard about an RFP that has been issued; we’re not sure if it’s closed or not. Can the Minister indicate if this is going to be new monies, potentially, that will be asked in the upcoming next budget, or is this something that would be included in the overall project design and scope and budget? Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, this is going to be our first year of operation, or anticipated first year of operation with this bridge and we are going to be learning lots of new things about a bridge of that magnitude over a body of water, icing, snow cover. If anyone has been down there to see it, it’s quite a large angle of inclination, so we could be running into issues of sliding, small accidents and things of that nature. If we run into a problem in our first season of operation, as the Minister indicated, we don’t have a phone. There is no emergency phone to call.

What does the department suggest we do...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It does appear that we’re actually moving in the right direction with respect to the safety of our communities and proper emergency action plans.

Can the Minister indicate in his crystal ball of items to be completed during the term of the 17th Assembly, when we would be able to see the completion of these so-called emergency action plans throughout the territory?

It’s pleasing to see that we’re getting to the completion of all 33 communities in what is very, very important here. Leading to my second question on the subject of hazard assessments, these are basically high-level scenarios in terms of where we have communities at risk. Can the Minister indicate as to if all hazard assessments have been performed in all 33 communities?