Wally Schumann

As the Member knows, we are going to be sharing the specifics of our bill very soon in this Legislative Assembly, and that would be an appropriate time to comment on that.

With that, I would like to say that, generally, legislation of this type takes periods of years to come to and enforce after supporting regulations are developed. I wouldn't anticipate that we would want to wait until that act came into force to pass negotiation benefits for our residents. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As the Member may not know, this agreement with Fortune has been in the works for some time, and we will continue to work on it. We signed with them last week in Vancouver. Its structure and its approach has been based on previous agreements that we have negotiated and put into place with the Government of the Northwest Territories. While we are reviewing our socio-economic agreements, the work is ongoing, and it has not reached a point where any conclusions or decisions have been made or could be reflected in the Fortune agreement.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When we developed the 2030 Energy Strategy we had to go out and have a look at everything and talk to everybody and have consultation about what residents felt that was important to them across all links of government and people in the Northwest Territories, and this was one of the programs in many that we are introducing in the 2030 Energy Strategy that needed to be looked at. It was felt that this needed to be funded in this manner, so it's one of the decisions that came out of that process.

Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following two documents entitled "Grants and Contributions Results Report 2017-2018" and "Energy Initiatives Report 2017-2018." Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As I said, you know, I think that's something I can certainly have a look at. There still has to be value for money. We cannot have tailored everything to just northern businesses. We have got to have value for money because the competitive process allows for the best price to come forward for the Government of the Northwest Territories, ultimately the taxpayers and residents of the NWT. I can certainly have a look at some of these projects of concern. It's just taking a highway contract, for example, possibly maybe breaking out the crushing totally separate from maybe the whole project, being...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When we put large projects, particularly projects over a million dollars, out to bid, there is criteria that follow the BIP policy and procurement policy, and there are a number of adjustments that are made in there for northern businesses: Local bid, BIP companies, then there's content for NWT, labour force, NWT procurement within that contract. There are a number of adjustments that are already put into place that give the Northwest Territories a little bit of an advantage over a southern contractor. These things are put into place to be able to leverage northern...

In 2016 the department issued a tender for a resupply of fuel, and Imperial Oil was the only company that submitted a bid because Imperial Oil is the only company in Hay River that owns the infrastructure to safely unload from rail to cars into the barges.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, the department has entered into a sole-source contract for a period of three years. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I'm not the Premier. Let's get that straight. That question would have to be redirected to the Premier, and I can gladly have a conversation with the Premier after this sitting and see how we are going to move on that, if we are moving on that. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Low-Carbon Economy Leadership Fund does have money in there for helping to gain efficiency in public housing. There is a significant amount in there. Again we have had to take a balanced approach to this whole aspect of how we are going to lower greenhouse gas emissions in the Northwest Territories, but the other side of it is that on these applications there are certain criteria that we have to fulfill to meet federal funding and, to be able to access some of this money, we have had to spread it around and try to help all parts of the economy in the Northwest Territories. This is one of...