Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m going to somewhat put a damper on the department here in terms of my colleague Mr. Ramsay’s comments. Certainly they are well taken.
I know the Minister has certainly listened in terms of when I went back home in terms of the price of fuel in our communities. They certainly appreciate the quick response. I’d like to say in terms of what Mr. Ramsay has said in terms of this department here responding to some of the needs in our communities in terms of lowering the costs of gasoline and heating fuel in my communities where they are so high that it was very scary for people to pursue their traditional lifestyle on the land. I want to say thank you to the Minister and staff for making some decisions for leadership to reduce the cost to make it bearable, just bearable, for my people to hunt, fish and trap in my communities. Also, to reduce the cost of living. I do want to say thank you to the Minister.
I do look at this department as putting some emphasis on some of the smaller communities. I will always state that some of the smaller communities need to be looked at in terms of the energy audits that are available from this government. There are certainly some good workers in the Sahtu that possibly could do some of the work. Also, having the energy audits into our facilities you also need to have some backup resources to support what the audits find out.
I’m somewhat lost for words in terms of the wood pellet heating systems. Again, more centralized around the larger centres. For the reasons, for the staff that had looked into these types of designs and certainly when you see these statements for these communities in part of the plans for DPW, it certainly makes you wonder if they forget some of
the smaller communities in the other ridings where some of these communities could have some other opportunities for the wood pellet heating systems or wood furnaces in our communities. When you look at probably the lowest cost of energy in the communities of the Northwest Territories, Fort Smith is rated as the lowest paying cost of energy and this government here is going to be looking at three facilities in Fort Smith to do some work to reduce the costs more for businesses. That’s somewhat mindboggling when you look at other operations in the Northwest Territories where we don’t have the luxury of the mines, the hydro-producing facilities built by the federal government, low cost of energy in the southern parts when you’re trying to do business in the northern parts that we seem to be third or fourth on the list to say this is where we need to look at reducing costs in our community.
I’m going to leave those comments to the Minister and I hope that this doesn’t become the trend of future governments or even this government again to look at where do we really need to put the dollars into some of these isolated communities that are paying the high, exorbitant costs of energy. That’s something that I think we missed the boat on in some of our smaller communities.
Mr. Chair, the local fuel delivery agencies are probably one of the hardest working people in the communities. Some of the facilities that this department has brought into the communities are well deserved and I see these facilities in our communities. I’m going to advocate for the one in Tulita. I’ve seen Deline’s facility, Fort Good Hope’s facility. I know the one in Tulita, the fuel delivery agency has been asking me about their facility and I hope that somewhere along the lines, in the books, this facility...I think he called it a shack compared to the other facilities that I saw that are operated by the petroleum products division. I know the one in Tulita over the years has contributed a high number of sales to this government in terms of volume of fuel spent in that one community. I’m going to advocate on his behalf and certainly for the people in my community. When they go drive up to that fuel tank it’s not a very good-looking picture. It’s not something you want to send home and be proud of. I would ask this department here to where they can find some movement to look at this facility.
Mr. Chair, I do want to say to the department here in terms of the woodpile remediation that it’s a very good project. As you know, a lot of our facilities were built with the woodpiles. Some of the facilities were built on muskeg, some were built on riverbeds, and when these woodpiles went in there they shifted and moved and it costs them dearly now. This is no fault to the department, but I think that in future some of these types of decisions should be made in consultation with our
community’s traditional knowledge of elders, for the sake of future construction of buildings. Sometimes we have a one-sided view of engineers or structural engineers and this is with their evidence in terms of ground testing, but sometimes the elders know a little more than the engineers. Case in point, in Deline the school is going through some woodpile remediation work and that, and there are other issues that we need to work together on in terms of building the best facility for our communities.
The Minister has indicated lots of money into the Deferred Maintenance Program. Again, when you look at some of our facilities, for example in Tulita, the old facility that’s there is an old building that’s sitting there. We have workers there who we expect to do standard, quality work in our community. That’s something that should be looked at.
In closing, Mr. Chair, I want to see if this department’s ever thinking about regionalization in terms of our workers. Right now we operate out of the Inuvik region. We have workers in the Sahtu but most of the direction is coming from the Inuvik regional office that flows into the Sahtu. We want to look at seeing where our regional office would have some more autonomy, more authority, more credence in terms of them making them own decisions in the Sahtu region rather than have the Inuvik region say what they can and can’t spend on certain projects, certain initiatives, certain things. They’re always waiting for the Inuvik region.
I do want to thank the Minister for acting fast on the school in Colville Lake on the furnace. I had been aware of it, but not until recently when Colville Lake called me. I want to thank the Minister for initiating a quick response to getting the furnace in there right away. I know if we had some regional autonomy, I think the region could have made that decision to fix that furnace as soon as possible.
Those are my comments to the Minister. Thank you.