Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to welcome the Minister and his staff that are with us this afternoon to discuss Bill 4. I want to provide a few opening comments if I could.
First of all, I wanted to publicly thank those individuals in the communities we visited for coming out and providing us the input that they did on Bill 4. It was much welcomed. A couple of other things Madam Chair alluded to in committee's remarks was an issue over compensation from the initial Taltson development still weighs heavy on the minds of many in that region. I think it's something that needs to be taken care of by working with the federal government and those folks that are involved in that.
I do want to say that I will be supporting the bill. I feel it is necessary to move forward and get on with things and this is the enabling legislation to allow the expansion at Taltson. Mr. Chairman, I wanted to add a couple of things here. They are important for me. We look at the expansion at Taltson and the Minister has said it himself and others have said it, it's strictly designed to supply power to industry. That's the mining companies north of Yellowknife. There is something about that that doesn't sit right with me. The Northwest Territories Power Corporation needs to have more of a social conscience, if you will, and needs to learn at getting the best power rates into our communities as we possibly can. By looking at an expansion at Taltson and not looking at providing lower cost power to communities in the South Slave, I think we are missing a key aspect of this.
I am happy to see the aboriginal component included in this, but from what we heard out on the road, Mr. Chairman, the consultation has just been somewhat abysmal really. I don't know if we talked to anybody who had actually been to a consultation meeting or a briefing. Some people didn't even know it was happening. It was news to them. In a small community like the Northwest Territories, specifically in the South Slave area, you would think people would know what was happening. So I am not sure if the Power Corporation has responsibility. I think they do have a responsibility in that area because they are a partner in that project at the end of the day, but they have to communicate with their partners that in order for
this project to go anywhere, that consultation and the community involvement, the community buy-in, again if you can roll in a social component to this, I think that would be beneficial to be sure.
Again, it just pointed to the fact, again, Mr. Chairman, the Northwest Territories needs a comprehensive overall long-term vision on hydro development in the Northwest Territories. I know we are working towards one, but the sooner we can work out what we can do and how we are going to get it done, the better off we'll be, Mr. Chairman. So with that, I would like to thank the Minister and his staff for being here. Mahsi