Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I
know that this one piece draws attention to the one project. As stated, if it were to proceed — because there are some huge hurdles yet this project needs to go over — this money would be capitalized. Otherwise, we’ve already, for example, looked at it. We felt as the Government of the Northwest Territories that we needed to do some serious work in either hydro expansion, biomass expansion or wind energy. So we’re starting to go down that. There are a whole number of initiatives we need to look at as the Government of the Northwest Territories to reduce the cost of living in the Northwest Territories.
For example, right now there’s been a request for us to be involved, in a sense, through the Power Corporation. If it were to go ahead, it would be a business deal that would see the Power Corporation’s share retain earnings from the sale of power. This would then, overall, help the Northwest Territories, so we would get fewer of those rate riders in our communities farther north. Bigger than that is the fact that if we got involved and said, “Let’s try to go around the lake” — which is something I believe is worth another look at — we would then, as the Government of the Northwest Territories, have to come up with the public money to make that section go. If that’s the case, then I would see where the Member’s concern comes from. That project would then only help those communities that would be hooked up.
I think we can go back to the original Taltson project. The original Taltson project was built by the mining company out in Pine Point. It supplied them. It wasn’t until that mine shut down that that power was then hooked up to the other communities in the South Slave part of the territory. This could go down that route as well. Right now it is a business case to supply power to a mine to make earnings happen for the Power Corporation. As the Government of the Northwest Territories, if we want to expand that, we could, but then we would become directly involved in the sense of trying to offset those costs for going around another route. I think it’s worth having that discussion.
But on the bigger picture, as the Government of the Northwest Territories, we’re looking at a whole number of factors here that are going to require investment by the Government of the Northwest Territories. We have to look at how far we can take biomass into our communities — talking about the power rate structures right now. Technology is coming into play that could see us convert some of our diesel generators into a much cleaner burning fuel system as well as lowering the cost of power in our communities.
I would ask the Minister, when we do this and that report comes out, to actually look at the costs we
would have to become a player if were to hook up communities and go up and down the valley. The Bear Rivers project was one tied with the pipeline. We were hoping the last government would tie that together and supply communities to the north. Sahdae Energy out of the Sahtu is still somewhat actively involved in looking at that development. So there’s still potential there.
This piece is the start of where we can go as the Government of the Northwest Territories. I would say that we’d be prepared as a government when we look at the biomass piece and the wind energy piece…. We’re going to have to put more money than we announced in the budget into some of the tests for wind energy. We’re going to have to step up to the plate fairly large, and we’ll be coming back to Members during the business plan process to further identify those.
We’re going to have to expand the way we go. I agree with the Member; we can’t afford to keep paying these higher rates. But it is a fact that we have to look at some of these options to go forward and see if, in fact, they are viable options for us.