Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I want to look at the perspective of costs of living on two sides. This issue came up to me as well throughout the campaign process but it's been one that's been coming up, really, for as long as certainly I've lived in the North. And firstly, what is it that's keeping our costs so high. Two big ones come to mind immediately. First is our lack of transportation infrastructure and second is our lack of energy infrastructure. So we have large scale projects, Mackenzie Valley Highway. That certainly isn't a short-term thing that's going to change the high cost of living. There are shorter term projects, smaller scale connections directly into communities that are now isolated with all-season roads and sometimes even without winter roads. There's been some success on projects like that. There was awards for the Tlicho All-Season Road. What can we do to have more success like that, more awards on a national scale for the good work that's happening in the Northwest Territories? Still that's a fairly large scale. But then I get back to energy infrastructure. Both electricity and heat, this is an area where we face significantly higher costs than everywhere else. I know myself and other Ministers in the last government raised the alarm bells with the federal government. And one of the last things I was able to share with city administrators and municipal government administrators and Indigenous governments was a long list of funding opportunities to help them remove the need to rely on diesel and to bring in alternative sources of power or to reduce their costs of electricity through other means. So I'd like to look back at that immediately and see what we are doing to capitalize on the availability of those funds to change the reliance that we have right now on the high types of fuel. And then, of course, there is the longer term question of what are we going to do for micro grids for small communities that are not connected, better transmission lines to ensure that they are and the larger scale projects of renewables, and then ensuring that we actually have the infrastructure to adapt to renewables so that we see actual meaningful long-term change to bring our costs of living down. Thank you.
Caroline Wawzonek on Questions by Members
On December 7th, 2023. See this statement in context.
Questions by Members
Election Of Premier
December 7th, 2023
Page 9
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