Robert Hawkins

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. If the Northwest Territories government was to eliminate any outside distributors and, at the time, the reason I ask this question is because I’ve been talking to the department about this one. So, what analysis has been done if we eliminate the outside distributors, therefore we don’t necessarily need a PUB and we roll the NWT Power Corporation into a department? Now, normally you describe this as a hypothetical, but this is work I know the department has been reviewing and evaluating. Where would this take us and what’s the predicted or estimated cost of lowering the...

Well, Mr. Speaker, I’m not sure Mrs. Groenewegen has a point of order. First of all, the company isn’t particularly named. Second of all, the profits that they’re able to make are listed through the PUB process, so that is public information, and when they’re earning millions and millions of dollars one can describe it with whatever adjectives they reasonably feel.

That said, Mrs. Groenewegen should also come clear with her connection, if there is any that we need to get on the record, a reason why she is defending the company. I don’t understand what may or may not be, but a few minutes ago I...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to ask the NWT Power Corp Minister about the rates and the profits noted through the PUB process for each distribution area.

Is the Minister able to speak to those types of profits that are made by our franchise agreements that are struck so they can make power distribution through our communities? I’ll leave it up to him to provide what level of detail he’s able to start with and we’ll kick it off from there. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to call a point of order on the Member for Hay River South for accusing my last comments as all lies. I can refer to several sections, such as I felt that it’s imputing ill motive and in some ways some might even describe that as insulting, bad language. So we could spend time going through all of these, but they were a statement. Thank you.

I look to the gallery and my Yukon colleagues when I say this, Yellowknife is number one, and I say this as we have the highest power rate bill, be it Whitehorse, Iqaluit and Northwest Territories. Yellowknife, we have the highest power rate. So, we’re number one. The problem is, I don’t want to be number one anymore, nor does anyone in this city.

So the question now becomes why do we have southern distributors here in the Northwest Territories when we have an option to start squeezing this problem towards a positive solution. We have a southern distributor working here in the Northwest...

[English translation not provided.]

I am practicing my French, and some days I practice better than others.

Mr. Speaker, what I was trying to say there was today’s final statement will be on fracking technology. Our environment, our water and our land are very important.

Industry is working very hard to reduce the environmental impact of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. General Electric and Statoil, a Norwegian oil and gas producer, are working on waterless fracking. Instead of water, these companies plan to use supercritical carbon dioxide to enable the flow of gas and oil to their wells.

Su...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I certainly do speak in favour of the principle of the bill, but I do feel that the Residential Tenancies Act update is missing some critical components. I’ll just leave it as simple as that, for example, the Hotel Keepers Act allows someone to be let go, removed, and evicted where the update of the Residential Tenancies Act shows that it’s well thought out that people are protected, and I would assume that the update would have considered these types of remedies.

The example I provide to somebody is that there are folks out there who can only rent in certain spots, and...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I seek unanimous consent to return to item 8, oral questions, which is on the orders of the day. Thank you.

---Unanimous consent denied

I appreciate the answer from the Minister. Is the Minister saying that if he had a sharply worded letter from committee that supported this initiative, the government would jump on it?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to return to one of my favourite subjects, and that’s direct appointments. As we’ve all heard at length repeatedly over the years, my concern that they’re not publicly accounted for and whatnot. Rather than spending a lot of time, let’s go straight to the Minister of Human Resources and get right to the bottom.

What type of public reporting does the Minister see is available for the public to know how many direct appointments we are doing, how often do we make them, and what departments receive them? Let’s just start off with some simple questions like that.