Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The intent is to provide a reimbursement of the retail rate for the kilowatt hour alternative energy that’s generated and supplied back to the grid. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, we have pulled together a guidance document that captures best practices, and we are looking forward to the feedback from committee, once they’ve had a chance to review it. It contains a whole host of such practices and we will look forward to whatever advice they can give us. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The government has been working on a guidance document in a draft form. Initially we started with encouragement from the committee. We have worked with the regulator. We have come up with the draft copy that is now on its way to committee. It is going to capture some of the best practices that we think are critical as we look at the use of unconventional hydraulic fracking that has taken place in the territory and where we anticipate in the central Mackenzie and the Sahtu, it’s going to be a practice that is going to have to be managed carefully. We’ve worked to come up...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just briefly I want to just draw Members’ attention up and away from this specific issue that is on the table and just remind everybody about our fiscal circumstances, similar to what Mr. Menicoche was talking about.

We have a very modest capital budget, a very rigorous process that takes a great deal of patience and hard work to get projects on from across the North. It’s a process that everybody watches very carefully. We also are dealing with a project – I want to mention this project again – of the Stanton Hospital that is going to be the biggest capital project we...

We have to look at the consolidated public accounts process as part of the overall budgeting process where we do business plans, we do reviews, main estimates, and where we spend a full year either getting ready for the budget or cleaning up after the budget and then having a short, very, very short pause before we renew that process.

Once again, we have skilled, trained staff. We have qualified managers and we now have, of course, this clear political direction from this body, from the government, that public accounts have to be paid attention to and it has to be given its due. We are doing...

This is a process that has some history to it now, as I’ve indicated in my previous answer. I’ve taken this on, along with the deputy minister of Finance, as a critical issue. It’s been pointed out clearly by the Auditor General that we were lacking in this area and we acknowledged that. So, we have the political commitment. We have been working with all of the boards and agencies and government departments to make sure that they know that there is an emphasis on this particular function and that these reports have to get done. We’ve met with chairs and board presidents to make sure that they...

Thank you. When net metering was initially looked at, the focus was to entice and encourage folks in the thermal community, where the costs are very, very significantly higher than the hydro zone. We’ve built this array of supports, but the issue of the taxation, of loans, those types of things have not been considered. We have to wait and see how it works in the hydro zone where we’ll, in effect, be exchanging one type of renewable energy for another as opposed to the thermal zone where we know we’re going to be replacing diesel with solar or wind, whatever other alternative energy is used...

Thank you. If the Member is interested, we can pull together what we think the cost will be on a community-by-community basis for the two zone bases, the thermal zone and the hydro zone. But clearly it’s not going to be the full cost that the Power Corporation has to pay to generate hydro, so the retail rate would be different. Thank you.

We have, and we are going to be taking over April 1st, a lot of the authorities through the Devolution Agreement. We have an environmental assessment process that is in place. There are further regulatory adjustments being made. We have a close working relationship with the Aboriginal governments across the Northwest Territories, especially in the Sahtu where this oil play is taking place.

As a government, we have a stated commitment as we go forward, to this balance between economic development and protecting the environment, which we hold very clear as a priority. So when you combine all of...

As I’ve indicated, this guidance document, in draft form, has been worked on for quite some time and we are specifically sending it to committee for their review and their feedback. So we’re not in the position, since the Member hasn’t seen the document yet, to have that discussion.

It is on its way to committee and we will look forward to having that feedback and discussion with them on a go-forward basis. Thank you.