Okay, thank you. I will go back to the Member from Great Slave.
Yeah, thank you. And, you know, further down that sort of avenue of thought that my colleague was going to earlier today, we heard at the biomass summit -- which was, you know, grateful that the GNWT was a funder of that summit -- that community energy planning is, indeed, core and crucial to help communities assess what it is that they think they want to do in that space, how they can grow energy reliance and self-sufficiency in that space. And so I would argue that that's a good thing to fund, and I hope that it does get reinstated. However, I know the Minister is not going to speak about the actions and outcomes planned in the forthcoming plan that has yet to be released and yet to be brought to committee, but is there any way that the data from Arctic Energy Alliance's successful programs and well-subscribed programs are, indeed, going into at least some of the thought process there? Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you. I will go to the Minister.
If I could send that to the assistant deputy minister, please.
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks to the Member for the question. Absolutely, I mean, we had a fair number of staff attend the conference as well and taking a lot of that feedback and then helping build into our joint strategy that will also then form our implementation plan. And a lot of those actions will be covered in there.
Okay, thank you. I will go back to the Member from Great Slave.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I cede my time.
Okay, thank you. I will go back to the Member from Frame Lake.
Thank you, Mr. Chair; I appreciate your indulgence.
Mr. Chair, I wanted to turn now to the Taltson expansion pre-construction. I know we spent $7.1 million on it last year. We've got $11 million to spend this year. Similar to the question I asked about the Mackenzie Valley environmental assessment, does the Minister have offhand how much we've spent on Taltson expansion pre-construction to date.
Thank you. I will go to the Minister.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I suspect we will be able to find that number here in just the next few minutes. I don't have it at the tip of my fingers, but somebody else does.
$18,265,000 in previous years, Mr. Chair.
Okay, thank you. I will go to the Member from Frame Lake.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. And so that would be, by my rough math, about $29 million that we've spent. Can the Minister help us understand what we'll be using the $11 million for this year. Thanks.
Thank you. I will go to the Minister.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. So planned work for 2026-2027 includes advancing to the regulatory phase which would include being ready for the beginning or the initiation of an environmental assessment process, also continuing, and I hope concluding, commercial partnership discussions amongst the Indigenous partners of this MOU group. And, Mr. Chair, also importantly, advancing -- and I think maybe not concluding but advancing to a real state of readiness, the discussions and work to deal with the legacy impacts for the existing hydro facility. Thank you.
Thank you. I will go back to the Member from Frame Lake.
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I appreciate that answer. And can the Minister maybe help us better understand -- and this is something she can follow up later if she wants to, but what are the line items involved in that? So $11 million is a fair amount of money for having discussions. Can the Minister help us parse out what exactly the money is being spent on. Thank you.
Okay, thank you. I will go to the Minister.
Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. Certainly, I agree it's a lot of money, and I think it's probably appropriate to put that out in some writing so that I am not just spitballing that size of a dollar fund. I mean, certainly some of it -- there are quite a large number of groups involved, and so to the extent of there being, you know, work happening with each group to discern the traditional knowledge, traditional knowledge studies, those are amounts that are provided directly to Indigenous communities and governments. So there's three groups, three Indigenous nations involved, but each one then also has regional groups within them. So, for example, within the Akaitcho, Mr. Chair, there are more than one group involved and that -- so each group is being asked to advance their own traditional knowledge work and then as well as doing the technical and design work for -- to prepare for the environmental assessment. So, again, I will take that back so that we can provide something with a bit more detail in a more organized fashion. Thank you.
Okay, thank you. I will go to the Member from Frame Lake.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. And, certainly, I don't want to put the Minister in the position of spitballing on the floor, to maintain our parliamentary behaviour.
My next question is, in some questions earlier this week, or last week -- weeks are all blending together, Mr. Chair -- we talked -- the Minister, in one of her answers, spoke to the Snare stabilization project. She may be able to correct me on the terminology for that, but can the Minister speak to that project. And the line of questioning was about some smaller projects. Because I know we're putting a lot of focus on Taltson and stabilizing our system by connecting our grids. But knowing that we're sitting in the situation we are now, I am curious to hear more about what we're doing in the short term -- in the shorter term to stabilize our grid and system against power outages and failures. Thanks.
Okay, thank you. I will go to the Minister.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. So a few examples, Mr. Chair, in addition to -- and I know people say there shouldn't be any more planning, we've done enough planning. The reality is a lot of the planning is quite out of date and/or was talked about but actually non-existent. So a plug again, Mr. Chair, for the long list of policy directions that were offered and issued out to the public utilities board which still involve strategic infrastructure and energy as well as Northwest Territories Power Corporation to go out and do that work, in particular with respect to integrated systems planning and the Snare resiliency study, which is, I think, the study that the Member might be referencing.
In addition to that, from a delivery side, there is still the outstanding Whati transmission line project, the Fort Providence-Kakisa transmission line project, a Fort Simpson diesel relocation, which would be combined with adding LNG capacity and potentially battery replacement capacity there, Mr. Chair. And also some other work alongside Northwest Territories Power Corporation and work with some of the smaller communities to see if there's opportunities for micro hydro. Thank you.
Okay, thank you. I will go to the Member from Frame Lake.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. And can the Minister help us understand, is the Snare resiliency study something that is going on right now, is it yet to occur, or has it already occurred?
I will go to the Minister.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, it is due any day to me, so I don't know exactly where it is in terms of its print but I suspect it's at a stage of fairly final draft. Thank you.
Thank you. I will go to the Member from Frame Lake.
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I appreciate that answer. I am looking forward to seeing what comes out of it and potentially seeing some -- yeah, some projects that come out of it that will help us.
Is the Minister aware of whether we've looked into the possibility of expanding any of the reservoirs in the North Slave region to better adapt to the low water levels that we've been seeing over the past number of years? I know we've done -- we've seen work from our water survey folks who have told us that this is going to continue to occur. And is that what the Snare resiliency study is focusing on? Thanks.
Thank you. I will go to the Minister.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Expanding reservoirs in terms of new flooding, I would say no, that's not been put forward, which isn't to say that there's not additional hydro capacity. So, for example on the Taltson, there is significant additional hydro capacity but also, I think, a real reluctance given the impacts of flooding on the land and the impacts therefore to people's communities and ways of life. There is some look at what the Lac La Martre reservoir would be in its current state. Again, not -- to just be clear so that there's no mistake from the public, if there are folks paying attention, not looking at damming or flooding but that there is existing capacity in the Lac La Martre area, which would be a project in conjunction with the Tlicho. Resiliency study does certainly include a hydrology component. There's hydrology analysis done. I know every year we were certainly looking at it -- those reports were coming through Northwest Territories Power Corporation and to me in the lower water years. It's a roughly every-nine-to-ten-years cycle, but the last cycle was shorter than it had been in the past. So I will pause there to make sure I don't run out of time, Mr. Chair.
Okay, thank you. I will go to the Member from Frame Lake.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I appreciate the thoughtfulness and caution on the part of the Minister. But I would also just note that, I mean, in conversations like this I think there's trade-offs to consider and people's cost of living is probably the thing I hear about the most and is one of the areas that us politicians, I think, struggle the most to address but it's certainly one that I get at the doors any time I go out. And I think the public would appreciate us, if nothing else, just having the conversation, putting ideas out there, considering the pros and cons of expanding a reservoir or whatever measures need to be put in place to help us control the escalating costs of our power system because I think people would appreciate having that conversation, you know regardless of what the outcome might be. So I would encourage the Minister to not leave options off the table out of an abundance of caution and rather put things out for conversation and see what people have to say about possibilities. Thank you.
Okay, thank you. I will go to the Minister.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I couldn't agree more, and I spend an awful lot of time wondering and worrying what has happened to our energy systems and why we find ourselves in the situation that we are in. Without finding customers who are not residential customers and who are large-scale customers, it is going to be very difficult to meaningfully and sustainably bring down the cost of power other than through subsidies from the government, which really just takes away resources from the government that could be spent on other programs and services and/or obviously requires us to, you know, raise taxes, which I can assure is equally unpalatable from the perspective of maintaining an affordable cost of living in the Northwest Territories. So we are -- part of what I wonder is what we can do to -- if there's a way to generate power more economically, if there's a way to bring power to people or entities that want to buy the power and therefore spread the cost of power out differently, those are all things that I 100 percent agree. We need to be looking for those customers everywhere, finding out how we get ourselves to those customers, and continuing to also look at ways to generate power more cheaply all at the same time. And at the same time when we build those things, not putting the cost of those things on the ratepayers, which is what it would be every time there's an infrastructure investment. So we're in a difficult situation on this, Mr. Chair, which is why there's both the investments I just named on the smaller projects. There also has to be the planning. Thank you.
Okay, thank you. I am going to go to the Member for the Deh Cho.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. My question to the Minister is what's happening with the expansion line to Fort Providence from where Kakisa-Fort Providence? Thank you.
Thank you. I will go to the Minister.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, there's still work happening on that line. It is at this point -- I am sorry, Mr. Chair, I don't have it in my -- sorry, in my list in terms of the budget for the coming year. We do have potentially some federal funds available to it. So it's not -- it's a capital project. But, Mr. Chair, where we're at on that is we do need to have some further conversations with Naka Power. So Naka Power are the distribution agency or distribution company within Kakisa and Fort Providence. NTPC generates the power out at the Taltson facility, and the vision is to connect to hydropower to what is still a diesel-run community out in Fort Providence, but that then will require the NTPC system to connect into the Naka system and determine who will own some of the power in between the two. There is budgeted $25 million for the coming year to see this program through. So -- sorry, my mistake. There is some money in this current budget. But at this point in time, what I can say is that there's a real desire to (audio) still some details to work out between the two entities. Thank you.
Thank you. I will go to the Member from the Deh Cho.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Minister said $25 million. Is that correct, or is that a mistake? Thank you.
Okay, thank you. I will go to the Minister.
Oh, sorry, Mr. Chair. It is in the -- it's in the capital budget, and so that's why -- yeah, I was thinking it's not showing up on this budget, which is our operations, but there is an amount budgeted for capital for the coming year. So we were just able to pull it up over here. Thank you.
Okay, I will go to the Member from the Deh Cho.
The number is $25 million? Thank you.
Thank you. I will go to the Minister.
That was what was budgeted for 2026-2027 in the capital plan, Mr. Chair. It wouldn't necessarily -- it wouldn't be the total cost of the project. The total cost of the project to run a transmission line from Taltson's facility all the way to Fort Providence would be well, well beyond that.
Okay, thank you. I will go back to the Member from the Deh Cho.
Thank you. Yeah, because there's -- I guess people want to know what's -- the constituents in my riding want to know what's going on with that and how is it they're going to be impacted by this.
And the other question I had was in regard to –- sorry, I lost my –- supply chain -- I am looking at –- I want to know how Enterprise can get phase 3 power. And this is the Minister to ask, so I am asking now. Thank you.
