Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I also rise to offer my full support of this motion for all the good reasons that my colleagues on this side of the House have already provided. I just wanted to just touch on a couple of issues that I would like to address with respect to the department which carries out the motion. I would like to see some cost-free energy efficient audits for private homeowners at no cost that access this program. So the government can go out after everybody's done their renovations and access money to make energy efficient changes in the household, we actually have a monitoring system in place that actually measures the success of the program, so we can come back and say we did get our money's worth out of this program, the $5 million we got back within six months of energy savings here in the NWT. I think that could be easily measured.
Like my friend Mr. Ramsay was saying I don't think we need 10 extra staff people in the GNWT to go out and do this. I think communities can take it upon themselves to carry out this energy efficiency audit that the government will be proposing on a lot of its own public commercial buildings.
Also, just with the motion, it also states that the $5 million for the program, to me that's on the low end, but we have to start somewhere and I think the $5 million is a good start. The $5,000 on a non-means-tested basis, I have pros and cons on that because of issues I did raise earlier with respect to remote communities. If they were going to attach freight costs associated with these energy-efficient appliances being shipped into the communities, then that's great too, or over and above this $5,000. I think people who access the $5,000 and use half of that money just to get the appliances into the community is not going to do them much good. So a lot of people in the small communities are not going to bother paying back the loan, should they have access to it.
So I would like to see that portion of any energy efficient costs that are incurred over and above this $5,000 like freight and shipping and handling, installation and maintenance. I think that's something we have to take into consideration when looking at a loan program like this.
With that being said, Mr. Speaker, I think it's a good start and we have to get the ball rolling and we have to be chiefs of our land, stewards of our land, and we have to show the rest of Canada that we only do produce .3 percent of total emissions here in Canada, in the North, but on a per capita basis we produce twice as much as the average Canadian. So numbers can always be juggled to make us look good or bad. I think this is a good start on a good path to energy efficiency here in the NWT and cost savings for everybody. Thank you.
---Applause