Floyd Roland

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thank the Member for rising on the issue of the agreement-in-principle. We did travel together and took part in the meeting. I must say that I viewed the meeting as a glass half full. I’m not sure if the Member was looking at it as half empty. There are challenges and issues that were raised at the meeting. As we had opportunity to speak with them, we recognized that challenge. There are issues around the agreement-in-principle that as I spoke to the leadership and heard from the leadership that we feel we can work forward on by signing the agreement-in-principle...

I’ll have to look at Hansard to figure out what specific part. We’re working with communities who have come forward and have done a fair bit of legwork. As I’ve said to the Member, we’re very interested in working with communities. I know that Municipal and Community Affairs has worked with communities and the Arctic Energy Alliance and communities have come up with energy plans and we’ll work with them. As the communities have worked with MACA, the Power Corporation, again, is open to looking at these requests to see what can be done and working with them on their energy plans as well. Thank...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m informed that the Town of Hay River, the council, has a working group between the Town, Imperial and, I believe, another firm, Global Technical Services, looking at their operations. We’d have to go to them to see what alternatives they may be looking at. Thank you.

The specific area there would be one that is more directed between the community itself and Esso, as Esso right now is the generator and the Power Corporation is the distributor of that energy. We are directly involved in that work going towards conversion and we’d have to look at alternatives, depending on what the community would decide. I would have to get more up to speed on that. I know that the Power Corporation, the CEO and the staff who were at the meeting are aware of the concerns and I’ll look to them to see the work they’re engaged in. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I seek unanimous consent to return to item 3.

---Unanimous consent granted

Again, I know from the Power Corporation side on the energy distribution and working with Imperial Oil, that that work is ongoing. From an overall Government of the Northwest Territories perspective, when this issue first came to our attention, a number of departments were pulled together to look at what needed to be done and the alternatives that could be looked at, and some of the initial work was to convert some of our larger buildings to diesel so that there would be less of a draw on the natural gas supply that was remaining, to allow a longer transition period. There hasn’t been a...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The issue of the natural gas situation in Norman Wells has been one we’ve been working on as the Government of the Northwest Territories in a number of fashions. The Power Corporation itself has recently had a meeting with the mayor and council of Norman Wells to discuss some of the work that’s ongoing and concerns with outages and so on and the distribution of power. They’ve also engaged in the work that’s going on for the conversion to either diesel or another form of energy in the community. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s been such a long time since I’ve done a Member’s statement, I thought I’d recognize the two young ladies who have been Pages here down from my constituency of Inuvik Boot Lake. We have Pages Meagan Ross and Paisley Day. I have to thank Mr. Robert C. McLeod’s constituency assistant who has travelled down as their chaperone and has been helping them as they help us do our job here in the House. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Clearly, we know the importance of our environment to northern peoples and that is why so much effort has been placed through the working group of our Aboriginal partners and the Government of the Northwest Territories. We’ve learned from some of our own previous transfers and transfers to other provinces and territories, in making sure we’ve set up a process that will clearly identify the challenges, the risks, the liabilities and who they belong to. So as the Member is saying, why haven’t we done that? That work is about to be done because we’ve signed the AIP. Otherwise, we would...

Mr. Speaker, by signing the agreement-in-principle, we actually kick in the year of process that has been under discussion for quite some time. We have already done a fair bit of work in the North around waste sites that are there, looking at historical programs that were run under previous and ministrations and decisions made under previous governments, federal governments as well. That is why there has been such an emphasis put on this document. It triggers the work that needs to be done. For example, in the responsibility of waste sites, chapter 8, point 3 talks about Canada will be...