Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today I rise to address the issue of the removal of the board of directors of the Northwest Territories Power Corporation. First off, Mr. Speaker, I would like to make it clear that I oppose the one-rate zone application. In fact, I had filed with the Public Utilities Board to intervene in opposition to the application.

So when the Premier advised me of the order that they were giving the Power Corporation to withdraw their application, I was torn. I was torn because, Mr. Speaker, I have always maintained that the Power Corporation should operate under a board of management with no political pressure. One of the main reasons for that, Mr. Speaker, is that I discovered when becoming the Minister responsible that political commitments had been made to communities, or at least communities felt that they had heard commitments from political leaders.

These commitments, had they been followed through, would have cost an awful lot of money and were not necessary to increase reliability of the power supply. Everyone would have paid more for power, even though it would not have improved the power supply.

Mr. Speaker, while the government moved to accomplish what I wanted by providing this direction to the Power Corporation, I am very disappointed that they did not follow through on the process. Once the application had been filed with the Public Utilities Board, the government should have filed an intervention with the Public Utilities Board and we should have then discussed the issue in front of the board.

Mr. Speaker, this situation actually illustrates an issue of communications, and really of bad communications, because to my way of thinking, we never should have gotten to this point. When I heard about the application I assumed that Cabinet had agreed to this process. This, after all, was a major policy shift; a social approach to determining power rates.

I had expected that there had been consultation with the Cabinet, particularly since the Minister responsible was at the meeting when I heard about the application. I guess I should have known then that there was a problem with communications when at the same meeting, a senior deputy minister said that Cabinet was not in support of the one-rate application.

Mr. Speaker, I cannot believe that the board members, most of whom I know well, would have gone ahead with this application if they had been told clearly that the Government of the Northwest Territories did not support the one-rate zone application.

I have no doubt that they feel that they have had the carpet suddenly pulled out from under them. Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you, honourable Members. Mr. Speaker, for the record, I would like to thank Gord Stewart, Ric Bolivar, Tom Zubko, Andrew Gaul and Eric Shelton for their work on the Power Corporation board. It is too bad that we have lost their experience and obvious dedication to this government's most significant asset. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

-- Applause

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and good afternoon. Mr. Speaker, it is good to be back in session, where we do the most public part of our work. Over the next number of days and weeks, I am sure we will have hearty and lively debates about many important issues facing us today.

Mr. Speaker, today I would like to use my first Member's statement to celebrate something good that is happening in the city of Yellowknife, and that is the official launch of the United Way campaign.

Mr. Speaker, along with many other Members of this House, including yourself and the Premier, I was one of the many people who took part in the United Way Kick-off Pancake Breakfast this morning at City Hall. In spite of the fact that it was the early hours of the morning, many supporters came out to socialize and to celebrate this milestone in our community. I believe it is worthy of celebration to mark the City of Yellowknife joining and being the 125th member of the United Way.

Mr. Speaker, for those of us who have been around for a while, we are aware of the many incarnations and the setbacks this idea of the United Way in YK has had to endure over many, many years, but for the commitment and tenacity of the board members, volunteers and many supporting organizations, the United Way would still be at an idea stage. For that, I would like to salute and congratulate all those who have made the United Way possible in Yellowknife.

Mr. Speaker, I would also like to congratulate the Government of the Northwest Territories for agreeing to facilitate payroll reduction programs for those employees who are interested and willing to donate in that manner. As the biggest employer in the Territories, I know that it is setting an important precedent, and hopefully pave the way for many other organizations to follow.

Mr. Speaker, I believe this is a very positive action for many in our community and I look forward to seeing much success for this newly minted organization. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

-- Applause

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today I would also like to speak to the issue of the now withdrawn application of the Northwest Territories Power Corporation. This subject of utilities and the regulation of those utilities is a very complex matter. I had the experience of sitting on the board of directors of the Northwest Territories Power Corporation for three years and I do not purport to be any kind of an expert on that subject, even after that close-up experience.

However, what I do know is that I had some very serious concerns about the process that was underway and I do support the intervention by this government as the shareholder. To move from community-based rates to a single zone, flat rate across the North is a major shift in how revenue is raised for the Power Corporation. In fact, conventional wisdom was that community-based rates were a fair way to raise revenue, given that a well-conceived form of territorial support was in place to act as the mechanism to offset the cost in communities where rates were higher than those in Yellowknife, so in fact the territorial support program did have the same net effect of levelizing the rates.

Given the Power Corporation's desire and intention to move away from its rate structure, and given the unquantified resulting impacts from such a shift, some very preliminary research and key consultations did not occur. Regular Members of this Legislature, for example, were not given an adequate opportunity to engage in the debate in this manner. Mr. Lafferty has spoken today about our style of consensus government, so this was a really key piece that was missing from this particular initiative, the consultation with the Regular Members.

Once the application was filed, some would argue that anyone who wished to intervene had an opportunity to enter that debate. I disagree with that for a number of reasons. For one thing, as I stated earlier, the regulation of a power utility is very complex and almost always necessitates the costly involvement of people with expertise in that field.

Secondly, the playing field is hardly even, given the seemingly unlimited resources of the utility to advance their side of the argument stacked against the limited financial resources of interveners who may or may not be able to recover their costs. It is safe to say that this debate would have cost millions of dollars and even if everyone's costs were recoverable, the consumer ultimately would have paid for this process.

Mr. Speaker, I want to state that the Public Utilities Board hearing is not the only process available for consultation. A general rate application will still proceed in any event and small communities, as any other individual, will have an opportunity to speak to that general rate application.

Mr. Krutko made reference to the fact that this is the only opportunity small communities have had to put their case forward. In fact, that is not true. They could intervene in any general rate application before the PUB. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

-- Applause

Mr. Speaker, I would like to seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It is good to be back in session. I would like to take this first Member's statement to tell you how happy I am to tell you that I have recovered very, very well from my double-bypass coronary surgery.

-- Applause

In the circumstances that I was in, Mr. Speaker, I had a lot of opportunity, as you can appreciate, a lot of time to reflect on our role here. I must say that the bottom line for me is that I am very, very happy to be back here and to continue my work representing the people of the Northwest Territories and the students and the people who are in need out there. I must say that I feel like I am certainly back to full speed serving this Legislature again.

I was very fortunate to have the services of some very fine medical people to help me through this process. I would like to make reference to several from Stanton Regional Hospital: Dr. John Morse, who is the intern medicine specialist at the hospital. He certainly has the expertise and knowledge, but also a very important element that I felt was very important for someone in my circumstance and others that may go into my type of situation, and that is the compassion he showed for the need I had, but also the understanding that it can be a very traumatic situation for a person to be in.

The other person I would like to mention is Dr. Theresa Hansen, who helped spur everyone on to take good care of me while I was in the hospital here in Yellowknife. And of course, the nurses and the medical staff -- I cannot say enough about the tremendously good work and the wonderful approach that they take to their work in treating patients, Mr. Speaker.

There were many others. The Yellowknife firefighters who handled the ambulance service and the medevac crew and the medevac nurses that take care of you when you are medevaced to the Capital Health Authority in Edmonton.

I would like to express my sincere thanks to all those who sent flowers, cards and books, and who visited me while I was in the hospital. I certainly enjoyed their visits, Mr. Speaker, and want to thank all of my friends and my colleagues who had the opportunity to visit.

I would like to thank Minister Handley for taking over my portfolio during my absence. Last of all, I would like to thank my family, and especially my wife Marg, for the tremendous support she provided. Thank you.

-- Applause

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have a Return to an Oral Question asked by Mr. Delorey on June 14, 2002, regarding the reasons for building the North Slave Correctional Facility in Yellowknife.

Standards and criteria for correctional facilities were developed in 1994. These were used to decide where the replacement for the Yellowknife Correctional Centre and the new young offender facility should be located. In 1998, a decision was made to locate these facilities in Yellowknife. This decision was re-examined and confirmed by the Government of the Northwest Territories.

The following are the reasons why the department decided to place the new North Slave Correctional Facility in Yellowknife:

1. Yellowknife has a resident Supreme Court, Territorial Court, JP Court, Court of Appeal, RCMP headquarters, and a large number of resident law firms. As a result, there are more accused people being dealt with in Yellowknife. Many of these must be held in custody before or after their case is finished.
2. The majority of court appearances take place in Yellowknife. A remand centre is required in the city to hold adults and youth in custody pending trial. The North Slave Correctional Facility will provide that remand space. If this facility were built in another community, there would be the additional cost to build and run a remand centre for adults and youth in Yellowknife.
3. Almost every flight in the NWT passes through Yellowknife prior to reaching its final destination. Costs to transport Yellowknife offenders as well as those from points outside of Yellowknife would increase if the facility were built elsewhere.
4. If the new North Slave facility were located in another community, there would be significant relocation or layoff costs. In 1998, it was estimated that these costs could total over $1.5 million.
5. In 1998, it was estimated that the Government of the NWT would save approximately $1.4 million by building a new young offender facility together with the new adult facility. These savings would be lost if these facilities were located separately. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you again, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have a Return to Oral Question asked by Mr. Delorey on June 14, 2002, regarding the North Slave Correctional Centre and the lack of comparable facilities in the south to use for cost estimates.

This project is unique. There are no other corrections facilities like it in Canada.

-- Laughter

It not only has maximum, medium and minimum security requirements, but added to this is a healing, spirituality, restorative justice component in the design and programming of the institution. It is also sharing a number of areas with the young offender facility, such as the gym, the kitchen, and the security system, as well as the heating and ventilation systems.

Not only is the facility unique, but design and cost information for southern correctional facilities is limited and is difficult to apply to the NWT for two reasons. First, the North has environmental and technical constraints that are not comparable to the south. Second, the scale of projects in the south is much larger than the North Slave project.

These are not the only reasons why a firm price was not obtained before the project began. In 1998, the fire marshal condemned the Dene K'onia Young Offender Facility for the secure holding of young offenders. The Department of Justice was given until July 1, 2001, to erect new facilities. Under pressure from the fire marshal's order, it was necessary to "fast track" the construction of this project and to use an alternate method of construction. There is no general contractor but instead a construction manager who tenders out various aspects of the job to subcontractors. The drawings for phase one were done incrementally. Drawings for a certain aspect would be done and that job would go out to tender. While that was being done, the design engineers were designing the next stage of construction. Given this approach, it was not possible to get the price for the entire project in advance. Incidentally, the drawings are now complete for the whole project.

Finally, the overheated construction market that is currently being experienced could not be anticipated when the initial project budget was established in 1999. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have a Return to Oral Question asked by Mr. Braden on June 19, 2002, regarding income support programs.

The Government of the Northwest Territories continues to reinvest funds arising from the National Child Benefit, in the Healthy Children Initiative, NWT Child Benefit, and Territorial Workers' Supplement.

The Healthy Children Initiative is administered jointly by the departments of Education, Culture and Employment and Health and Social Services, and provides support and service development in the following five key areas: strengthening young people, healthy babies, building stronger families, supporting parents, and healthy communities.

The Healthy Children Initiative is a community-based program that provides funding to local organizations for the enhancement of existing childhood programs and services for children zero to six years of age and their families. Funding, based on written proposals, is provided to community groups to deliver programs specifically for their community needs. The funding provided through the National Child Benefit reinvestment allows for the delivery of programs that meet the needs of young children and their families.

In Yellowknife, the following Healthy Children initiatives, currently funded through the National Child Benefit reinvestment, are typical of programs supported throughout the NWT:

- Early Intervention Program, NWT Council for Persons with Disabilities;

- Family Support Program, Yellowknife Women's Centre;

- 4 Plus Program (pre-school), Catholic School Board; and

- Parent-Child Resource Centre, Yellowknives Dene First Nation -- N'dilo/Detah.

The NWT also reinvests funds arising from the National Child Benefit in the NWT Child Benefit, which includes the Territorial Workers' Supplement. These are cash payments included in the monthly federal cheque that is sent to all low-income NWT residents. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I have the privilege of being able to recognize some constituents, as well as a board member for Stanton. I would first like to recognize Ms. Bea Campbell, the president of the Northwest Territories Seniors' Society in town for the annual gathering of the seniors.

-- Applause

Mr. Dennis Bevington, the director of the Energy Secretariat, who is going to make straight these complex issues for us.

-- Applause

Mrs. Vina Beaugrain-Champagne, who is a constituent and the mother of my executive secretary, Ingrid.

-- Applause

Finally, last but not least, Mr. Dave Wind, member of the Stanton board. Thank you.

-- Applause