Robert C. McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I wish to advise Members that the Honourable Alfred Moses will be absent from the House today to attend the Arctic Winter Games in Nuuk, Greenland. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

When the formula funding review group reviewed all that, they took all that into consideration because they felt that in the past there has not been any increase due to inflationary costs and the higher cost of doing business. The plan was to initiate that work at the beginning of the life of the 18th Assembly, but we thought that, at that time, during the 17th Assembly, if we took advantage of the opportunity we had to start that work, when the new 18th Assembly came in, they would have all the information they needed to go forward. Rather than start the work now and have it done in two years...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we had a lot of feedback from the communities because a lot of communities were part of the group that reviewed the formula funding. We had a lot of feedback from the communities. We had a lot of feedback from the NWTAC, which represents all 33 communities in Northwest Territories. Thank you.

The structure of the P3 agreement with Northern Lights is such that the ownership, design, and construction of the fibre line was a transferred risk from the GNWT to Northern Lights. Additionally, Northern Lights has the obligation to fulfill the requirements of the regulatory permits. As indicated by Northern Lights, the cost of remediation was borne by Northern Lights in accordance with the project agreement. Unlike a traditional build procurement, the construction risk was transferred by the GNWT to Northern Lights.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, our department officials will be assessing the options available to the GNWT under the Project Management Agreement to ensure that the work gets completed. This will include working with Northern Lights and the communities to ensure construction can be completed early in 2017 and the line commissioned shortly thereafter. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The cost of fuel is one that this government has taken immediate action on to lower the cost of living in the communities served by the Petroleum Products Division. The Minister of Public Works and Services announced on Tuesday that, effective February 5th, the price of home heating oil was reduced by $0.09 a litre in Paulatuk, $0.07 a litre in Sachs Harbour, and $0.08 a litre in Ulukhaktok. With this reduction, heating oil prices in these communities have been reduced by approximately 20 per cent over the last year. We recognize that the cost of heating fuel and gasoline in our smaller...

I am willing to have discussions in how we can move forward with this. We have to take a number of things into consideration. We would have to look at the legislation to see if we are able to even entertain that idea, so as I commented before, I will have a discussion with the appropriate parties and see if there is an opportunity for us to move this forward. I take the Member's point, again, about the rent-to-own, but because it's an unsettled area, it kind of slows the process down a bit. But we will have those discussions. We will see how we can move the issue forward.

We are quite limited to what we can do in the unsettled areas, because some of that land might be claimed by the claimant groups, but we would be willing to work with the Member and work with the claimant groups to see if there are any options that might be available to us. But because they are in the process of negotiation, as I said a couple of times already, our options are quite limited.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'd like to welcome to the gallery today a constituent of Inuvik Twin Lakes and also my official agent in the past election, Mr. Denny Rodgers. I would also like to welcome to the Assembly my constituency assistant, Krysten Cardinal, and I'd like to welcome all the young folks into the gallery as well. I would like to welcome all folks into the gallery as well.

---Laughter

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As Members have heard me say in the last two weeks that we have been here and even before that, the challenges that we're facing financially, I mean, we would love to be able to be in a position where we can help a lot of the communities with their challenges that they face. We have challenges of our own as a government, and it's one of the reasons we're trying to go through the exercise that we are going through, so we can be in a position to help our communities with some of the challenges they face. Plus, being able to invest into infrastructure which would create jobs in a lot of the...