Mr. Chairman, as I said before, we had to respond to what was happening nationally and also right across North America. That urgency was there. There was a need to talk with aboriginal leaders. I do not know what more I could say without repeating myself.

A lot of the money that was spent was spent doing an assessment of the potential. There is a lot of information, very technical information that I would be happy to share with Members, if Members want to read the files and the information that has been collected.

Mr. Chairman, I believe the Premier wanted to add further on this issue. Thank you.

Mr. Premier.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, in the 70's, there was a gas pipeline proposed to go down the Mackenzie Valley. It was based on the perception that the United States needed gas at the time. It was deemed economical to do that.

The difficulty that the producers and the Canadian Government ran into was that the communities and the people here in the Northwest Territories were neither informed nor involved in that decision.

Today, as Mr. Handley has pointed out, we are at a point where the U.S. was in dire need of gas last year. It precipitated discussions between the U.S. President and our Prime Minister on at least two different occasions.

I think it is important for us as a government to respond to that. That was the fundamental need to fast-track the idea of an Energy Secretariat. If we are going to sustain support for a pipeline and oil and gas development in the Delta, in the Liard, then we need people at the community level to be aware of not only the demand globally, continentally in the U.S. and in Canada, but just to know how everything fits together; what the environmental concerns are, what is Canada doing regarding the Kyoto Protocol, what it means to us in terms of revenue, not only for our government but for emerging aboriginal governments as well.

We are proposing a hydro strategy. There are specific hydro projects that are in place there as well.

All to say that all of these things could be good things, but they are not worth anything if we do not take the steps to ensure that our people, at the community level, have the basic information they need to feel comfortable and to feel informed about the decisions they will be compelled to make with us in the next couple of years. It is fast tracking it, we agree.

Maybe, as Ms. Lee says, we are better off to build a kilometre of road. I guess I differ substantially. I think this is an investment we need so that we can protect the public willingness and support to look at pipeline proposals, the continued oil and gas development. This Energy Secretariat is our way of trying to make sure that the information is there at the community level for people. That is really what it is.

I ask Members to see it as an investment. We still have substantial support from our communities for oil and gas development, both in the Liard and the Mackenzie Delta, but Members are also aware that people are concerned. Unless they know what is going on and they have basic information, they are not willing to proceed at any great speed. If there is no move to invest in roads, invest in social initiatives that could negate some of the impact of development, then people are not going to be so willing as they are now.

It is trying to protect the momentum we have. That is really what it is for me. I hope Members can see that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Premier. Mr. Roland, did you want a chance to reply?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is interesting. Now we have gone from a hydro unit and a special warrant and the urgency required to some of the social concerns of the Northwest Territories in development. It is hard to argue the fact that the Premier just put forward, to be prepared. No one wants to be unprepared. However, as we heard the Finance Minister state earlier, there probably will not be a decision. If we want a report, there might be a report by the end of the fiscal year. I question the fact that this is a special warrant, that it was spent on an urgent basis.

We are really stretching our parameters here, never mind the fact that the establishment policy of FMBS does not include expenditures of this nature as far as I can see. It is one of maybe you can develop policy, that would be agreed. In fact, this does not even go towards establishing policy, not that I have heard yet. If we are going to establish policy, do we need to spend $1 million in the system?

Anyway, this money is spent by special warrant, it is of an urgent nature -- where do we draw the line? You probably would have had all the support of Members of this Assembly to go this route if a plan had been laid out. However, to come back later on to say a special warrant for $1 million, and oh, by the way, we probably could have a report for you by the end of the year -- I mean, does that suffice? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Minister.

Mr. Chairman, in a lot of ways, we report almost daily when the House is sitting. We report to committees on an ongoing basis. There are many forums by which we report without putting final reports or annual reports on all the initiatives we undertake.

I do not view this one as any different in that respect. It is something that I am prepared to give the committees, to give individual MLAs, briefings, updates at any time. The question that I answered before was with regard to a report at the end of the year, a formal annual report. I had not contemplated doing that. I will say if the Members want that, we could give an update on it. Having said that, we are prepared to meet with committees any time as we do on all our initiatives. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Next on the list I have Mr. Delorey.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am not going to say too much on this here to hold things up, but I have to say a few things with regard to the amount of money that we are spending, both with the Hydro Secretariat and the Energy Secretariat. For me, I have to go back to representing my constituents and the people who elected me to come here. They are watching how we spend our money.

I agree. I think we have to look at ways of generating revenues for the government, for the people of the Territories and for communities. However, when I look at the amount of money that we are spending in the name of energy and how many different groups are actually spending money under the name of energy, with no exact amount as to how or where it is going, the fundamental question we have is that we do not even know if we are ready for development, if everybody is in agreement and that we are going to get anything at the end of this.

If all we want to do is consult with communities and find out if everyone is in agreement to proceed with hydro development, I do not see where that would take the amount that we are talking about here. Today, when I get a call saying that a licensed play school that has been in operation for a number of years and has been fighting this government for over two years trying to get a little bit of funding so that she can stay open and keep it to service a community, when they are looking after 19 kids and she is finally closing her doors on December 12th because she cannot access any dollars from this government because we do not have money. We do not have any money to address our kids' needs and here we are spending millions on looking at something that might generate revenue for the Territories.

I think that somewhere along the line, we have to be very conscious of providing some services to the needs that we have today. This is going to increase the cost of living. It is cutting back on our services and I really do believe that we have a large number of organizations right now that are going around consulting. We have the Intergovernmental Forum and we have every aboriginal group talking about where they want to go and how they want to develop their territory.

I think there are vehicles in place right now that we can get the answers that we want. I think a lot of the money we are spending would be spent by business, by big business. If we tell them we are ready for business, they will come and they will do a lot of the work that we are saying we are spending money on right now. I do not think we have to spend the money on the business end of it. We are not going to be able to do the business anyway. Every one of those businesses are too big for our government to take on and fund. I think business would look after that expense. All we have to do is tell them we are ready, get policy in place, legislation, what do we want to make from it, how much do we want for our aboriginal governments, how much do we want for our government. I do not see that costing $2.6 million or $3 million.

I do think that our communities are in big need of funds. That $2.6 million, or $1 million even, would go a long way to satisfying some of the needs that we have with our kids that we say we want to promote and we want to give our kids a good start in life. When I hear that we have to shut operations down in our communities because we have no money, I have a hard time looking at spending these kinds of funds in just consultation. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Delorey. Minister Handley.

Again, Mr. Chairman, I want to say that of this money, there is $800,000 out of the million that was spent on research, so it is not just consultation. There is a lot of research that was done. We could rely on the private sector to just look after us but we really, in our responsibility to the public, have to have a pretty clear idea of what potential is out there and what are the resources that we are managing on behalf of the residents of the Territories.

I do not think it would be responsible just to depend on the private sector to just do it for us without us having any idea what is there. I think there is a need for us to do that research and decide for ourselves to what extent we want to take advantage of the opportunity.

As well, Mr. Chairman, there is always the need to balance the paying for the costs that people are facing and trying to manage businesses or social programs and so on. A balance between that and a balance between putting our money into investing where it is either going to cut our costs or generate new reviews.

This year, this supp, for example, there is $2.7 million in here because of forced growth on energy costs. That would just continue to grow. I do not think that it will be responsible to not look at ways of cutting that cost through the Energy Secretariat's initiatives or looking at initiatives like the hydro one, where we are saying if we cannot cut the costs down and balance our budgets only that way, we need to look at new revenue opportunities. That is what this hydro potential is basically doing, is saying let us find a way of generating new revenue and also have the opportunity to decrease our dependence on diesel. Thank you.

We are dealing with directorate, special warrant, $1 million. Next on the list I have Mr. Lafferty.

Mr. Handley.

Mr. Chairman, I have to have some appropriation to charge it to. So if I am travelling and doing consultations with communities on hydro, then that really quite rightly has to be charged to the hydro project. It could not be charged to the fur program or to Finance or to somewhere else. Could my ministerial travel have covered it? Theoretically it could have. However, I think this is an appropriate place to charge it since these discussions were about hydro. Thank you.

Mr. Lafferty.

Mr. Minister.

Mr. Chairman, that was the first opportunity there was for approval for this. The expenditures on this began much earlier than that because again, I have to say -- not just because of the assemblies, that is one piece of it -- but the other piece was because of the situation that was happening nationally and internationally. That was all going on and we were spending this money earlier than September 26th for sure. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Mr. Lafferty.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Mr. Handley.

Mr. Chairman, I would have to check back but I believe that AOC or one of the committees was briefed on this initiative well before or during the session in July. I do not think this was a big surprise to everybody that we were looking at hydro. I think everybody was very much aware of it much earlier than that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Mr. Krutko.