Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as you know, we've been discussing this for quite some time now in this Legislative Assembly and also our pre-budget consultation. This has been a main topic in every community that we visited. It has been an ongoing issue and I have to commend the government that there are programs in place to subsidize various initiatives. At the same time, Mr. Speaker, we must keep in mind that the oil price is going up, even at the community level. Especially the most isolated communities, the high cost of living itself is a huge burden on the communities, especially those that are fragile: the elders that have low incomes, the pensioners.
Mr. Speaker, part of the reason we put this motion forward is to identify that we have to conserve energy. It's energy efficiency. We talk about wood stoves, the pellet stoves, the North Slave Correctional Centre that we talked about today, how productive the choices were, the government's initiative, and we'd certainly like to see those kind of initiatives into small communities as well, whether they be commercial, whether it be residential. So those kind of initiatives will definitely be available initiative from this government, the 15th Assembly, the 16th Assembly, and years to come.
Mr. Speaker, I would just like to highlight that with this new initiative, the energy efficiency loan program, we talk about the household income through the Housing Program, but this is also beyond the Housing Program, where there's a burden where we relieve all people that make money that are average earners, there's let's say 80,000 cap and this is going beyond that. We're assisting Northwest Territories residents, and this will be very beneficial for the community members, especially those who are living in the most isolated communities as well.
Mr. Speaker, at this time I'd just like to highlight the positive initiative that this government has done and there's more to come. Especially with this kind of motion I think we need to move forward. I certainly hope Cabinet will take this into consideration as one of their high priorities.
I realize the Department of ITI and Department of ENR are working on all kinds of initiatives to conserve energy and promote even more energy efficiencies in the Northwest Territories. There's also news from the federal government that money is coming forward on energy efficiencies and we, around the table here, are looking
forward to that initiative, also, Mr. Speaker. With whatever the outcome is with the federal budget, whether there be the 1.5 billion that's been thrown around, then we need to move forward. This is one of the initiatives that we want to move forward from our government, the Northwest Territories government perspective. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
---Applause