Wally Schumann

As I said, I stated that I met with the Akaitcho, and the Deninu Kue were there, represented by their leadership, and I had a conversation with all the leaders of the Akaitcho First Nations. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

When you start looking at the whole electrical grid system across North America, which is not connected at this point, actually, the federal government is having a serious look at how they can do that to help make a more stable grid right across the country and share renewables, but the situation with Alberta and Saskatchewan the Member does not bring up is they are on an extensive amount of coal. Both of these provinces have coal generation that they need to get off there to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Both provinces are clearly at the odds right now with the federal government...

For those of you who have read the energy strategy very, very closely, in there it clearly states that the Northwest Territories needs to reduce our GHGs by 517 kilotonnes by 2030 to meet our targets for the 2030 pan-Canadian framework that we have signed on to. Of this, 290 kilotonnes can be achieved through a variety of models, reducing diesel generation in communities, industrial efficiency, renewable heating in communities, transportation, et cetera. That leaves us a gap of 227 kilotonnes which is in there. The 240 from the Taltson Project, which it would generate, would be sufficient to...

Yes, the funding, the GNWT source, is from the existing O and M budget, just to answer the Member's question. This project is premised on the fact that the federal support is required for the project and that it will become a driver for clean growth for the people of the Northwest Territories. A preliminary business case will be prepared for this fiscal year. Work is still under way to find high-level costs for the transmission component.

Mr. Speaker, the Government of the Northwest Territories recognizes the need to advance the territorial vision of land and resource management in accordance with the Land Use and Sustainability Framework, and we have made a mandate commitment to evolve our legislative, regulatory, and policy systems to develop and proposing a variety of acts, including the Mineral Resources Act.

The Northwest Territories has mineral potential that could position itself as a primary economic driver for our country. The Government of the Northwest Territories is committed to responsibly managing Northwest...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First of all, I can't answer part of his question because it is considered proprietary, because there is only one manufacturer. What I can tell the House is the producers make available 10 percent of their production by value to the manufacturers. Over the past eight years, only an average of 0.6 percent or $10.6 million annually has been used by the manufacturers. That's one of the reasons you could see why we took this initiative to change this policy.

As I said, I will get all the information pertinent to this information that we need to make a decision on this. If it clearly needs to be done and it is something we can finance without going for an appropriation from our Finance Minister, we will certainly look at doing that. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As I said, we are working with our Indigenous partners. We have also had the prior history with the Deze group, who also supported this project going forward. I have had engagement with all three Indigenous governments on the funding announcement. They are willing to participate in this. We will be going out and engaging communities on these projects and Indigenous organizations to ensure that their participation and partnership is going to help us empower this project, and we will work on that basis going forward.

I can certainly follow up with the department and get them to have a conversation with our superintendent in the region to reach out to the local community and talk to our contractor on that section of the highway to see what is happening on the ground and get back to the Member on what our plans are moving forward.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I clearly laid out in my Minister's statement today, there are one or two things that we want to do. One of the first things we need to do is dust off some of that old work that has been previously done with the Indigenous partners that they had at the time, the Deze group. There has to be a significant amount of work that has to be done, the technical aspect of it, as well as the environmental assessment part of this that has to be revitalized, so we are going to be looking at all those things.

As I have said, we want to ensure that all the previous engineering and...