Shane Thompson

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I guess my struggle is that the health centre, health cabin, whatever you want to call it, in Sambaa K’e, the one presently is owned by the community and they've used that as an opportunity for revenue themselves. In my conversations with the community, they were looking at a number of options. Has the department finally made a decision to move ahead and just build it, and does the Government of the Northwest Territories own it? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I was asking about the Sambaa K’e Health Centre, not the one in Fort Simpson. That's all right. I understand. So, again, it's the Sambaa K’e Health Centre. Can you please provide the status on that? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I would like to speak about what the community of Jean Marie First Nations has done recently. This small community has really taken the initiative to become more energy efficient. The community has constructed a solar panel installation at the water treatment plant. This solar panel installation will generate approximately six kilowatt hours, which will offset 15 per cent of the plant's power consumption.

Mr. Speaker, the community was very excited about installing new solar panels to provide power to the water treatment plant. During the installation, the...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, the Standing Committee on Social Development concluded its review of Bill 8, An Act to Amend the Vital Statistics on October 25, 2016. In addition to soliciting written submissions, the committee had a public hearing at the Legislative Assembly building here in Yellowknife. The committee was pleased to receive a written submission from Dene Nahjo and to hear from members of the public who addressed the committee during the public hearing. Members, I also thank Shene Catholique-Valpy speaking as an individual, Coleen Canney and Teale MacIntosh from the Rainbow...

I thank the Minister for his answer. I'm just a little bit disappointed in hearing that it's a generic one and I appreciate we need to develop a territorial one, but when we're looking at the small communities we're trying to get them off diesel fuel. I mean, ultimately, we're trying to make it a better place for people and reduce costs. So will the Minister get his department or the corporation to look at that strategy and talk to the smaller communities so they can work on something that they can make use of their money to make it more cost-effective to live in their communities?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as I was talking about in my Member’s statement and as I was saying in question period, there was a public meeting with the Power Corporation and they talked about their strategic plan for the communities and the power, and how we're going to generate it and make it specifically for the communities. So I guess my question to the Minister, can he please explain if, by developing this, did the corporation actually work with the communities to come up with their specific one or is this a generic one for the whole NWT? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Again, I talked about the public meeting we had in Colville Lake being presented there as the ideal model out there. Is the Minister able to work with the corporation or direct the corporation to come up with a better storage operation that can be used in these smaller communities?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, earlier today I spoke about the Jean Marie and their willingness to become more energy efficient. I applaud them for doing this great initiative. Mr. Speaker, I was a little surprised to find out that communities can only generate 20 per cent of their own energy power from solar panels and stuff like that. This is a good step towards our mandate, but we need to do more especially for the smaller communities.

We need to help them become more energy efficient and the cost of living can go down. Mr. Speaker, can the Minister responsible for the NWT Power...

I thank the Minister for that answer, and it's actually great to hear that the corporation is working with other departments on that and I think it's a good idea in working with the communities and moving forward.

The Minister actually talked about, you know, Colville Lake and spending $2.7 million, if I'm correct, installing batteries to make sure the solar panels hooked in there. Will the Minister look at the other smaller communities south to see if they can actually do that to make it more efficient for a community? Another pilot project, I would love to have it in my riding, but if we...

I thank the Minister for his answer. I guess I'm looking at when they develop this strategy, which we haven't seen yet, has the corporation actually worked with the communities to develop specifically their own strategic plans to help reduce the cost of electricity? So can the Minister please advise this House, if the corporation has worked with the communities to develop their strategy as part of their strategy, or is it the strategy for the whole NWT's generic picture?