There’s the overall hydro initiative across the Northwest Territories and trying to bring that to either investment or industry, as well as communities. The three mini-hydro projects, we’re looking at continuing investment in this year to see if they can be put in place. For example, Lutselk’e was a community that has been identified in that area. We’re looking to continue that work in this upcoming year.
The bigger picture, as the Members have said earlier, is correct. Some of these large initiatives are going to take quite a number of years for ourselves as government. We’re going to have to find partners to build the larger hydro development potential in the North to bring the cost of living down once and for all in our communities — or, for example, a gas pipeline to get natural gas in the communities to convert from diesel to natural gas to give a more stable source. Those are a number of areas.
The cost-of-living initiative: as I said earlier, we’ve instructed Ministers who are lead on this file to set up times for committees to start getting some of that dialogue and input to see if there are other ideas we can bring to the table.
The other one is the Food Mail Program, which is supposed to help reduce the cost of transportation of food to the communities. We’re starting to work at trying to get that back and to propose some changes to it. It is administered through Canada Post, I believe. We’re going to have a look at it. We are quite concerned. There’s a substantial amount
of money from the federal government for the program, but we see little benefit for the North. We need to have that re-addressed.