Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Minister of ITI. Mr. Vician.

Thank you, Mr. Vician. Mr. Beaulieu.

It seems slow for me, but, anyway, I have another question on the...I am not sure this question was actually answered, but I wasn’t really answered to what I wanted to hear anyway, so I am going to ask the question. Two and a half million dollars, I am assuming that that is a contribution for the assessment, environmental baseline assessment for one of the routes, all of the routes, or what exactly are they spending $2.5 million on?

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Minister McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That is for all of the work that is required to go forward, so that includes some of the regulatory work, some of the engineering, and all of these costs will be cost recoverable when the project goes ahead. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I guess my question was, are we doing that work on all of the routes or one of the routes?

As part of the environmental assessment process, the proponent, as a corporation, was asked to do a desktop analysis of four routes. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, although I don’t have the information to oppose anything that is being proposed by the government, however, it seems to me like that in 2007-2008 we spent $1.8 million. Last year we planned to spend $3 million. I don’t know what we spent, but we planned on spending $3 million. This year we are planning on spending $2.5 million. We are spending, so far...Our objective, I guess, by the end of the next fiscal year is to spend $9.3 million dollars on environmental baseline work that is actually a desktop type of work. I am wondering about the value, really thinking about the value of that takes us three good years, which is, you know, a good solid 36 months and $9.3 million dollars and we are not really certain, are we, if we are going to proceed. I am assuming the reason that it is a desktop study is so that we don’t get too far into the expenditures of this government to find out at the end of the day that we are not going to do the project, because it is not feasible, that we are not able to sell the hydro to the mines. I guess I am asking the Minister if this is real. Is this really $9.3 million dollars over 36 months to see, to check if it is feasible? Thank you.

I can assure the Member that this is real. A significant amount of prefeasibility and engineering work and environmental work was done on the transmission line and the business case that was put forward was for the line to go to the diamond mines. What the environmental process required us to do was a desktop of three additional routes, one of them being the Simpson Island route, another one being a submarine cable and a third one being a west arm route. So those three were desktop reviews to get some very preliminary costs with those routes. But as far as the east arm route and the transmission route, there was significant work undertaken, and that money, as I indicated, would be recoverable once the project goes ahead.

I think that to spend $9.3 million on prefeasibility work on meeting the requirements of the regulatory process and to do preconstruction activities for what is ostensibly a $500 million project I think would be reasonable expenditures, especially since those costs would be recoverable once that project goes ahead. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Just changing gears for a second here, I am wondering why you changed the line

item from mini-hydro for communities to energy contributions for the two mini-hydro projects. It’s not that it’s that significant to me. I am just curious, because under the mini-hydro, again we have expenditures of $2.7 million. Pardon me, sorry, I am counting the revised amount, so $1.6 million roughly under mini-hydro for communities. Then we don’t put anything else into that section and then we put both the Lutselk’e mini-hydro and the Whati mini-hydro down under energy contributions. I am just wondering if the Minister could tell me why that change was made, although again I think you answered that for a previous question. However, I just didn’t really understand, so I will ask the question again. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I guess what we were trying to do was to simplify the process and to show exactly how much we were making in energy contributions. So we felt this way we could combine all of the projects on one line item which would simplify the information provided. Thank you.

Next on the list I have Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to say all my questions have been answered except for a bunch on the next page. However, maybe I will just ask for clarification. I see that the department is the coordinator of energy planning for GNWT for non-renewable, non-conventional and renewable energy sources in the NWT. I am wondering if that’s a recent clarification. I am wondering where Environmental and Natural Resources sits in the renewable energy side of things. Who will be the lead on things like wind and other forms of renewable energy? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. Bob McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I guess we are all in this together. We are working closely with the Department of ENR and also the Department of Transportation and the Premier’s office with his responsibility for the Power Corporation. So under the Ministerial Energy Coordinating Committee, we work very closely. For the most part, the departments continue to exercise their primary responsibilities. So with regard to energy conservation, wind, biomass, those types of projects, the Department of ENR would continue to exercise the lead responsibility. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks for those comments from the Minister. Just by way of a brief comment courtesy of this Minister, I was able to visit Manitoba on a hydro tour and learned quite a bit on that tour. Certainly one of the things that was

impressed on us was the long, long time frames and the significant dollars that go into developing any kind of hydro. Of course, it’s a different scale than much of our hydro, but I have also had personal experience with the Whati project and can testify at least as much patience is required as dollars for prefeasibility studies, et cetera. Just a side note to my colleagues there, Mr. Chair. Thank you.

I think we appreciated the participation of the Members of the standing committee and I think we all learned a lot from the trip. I think it brought home that we have to prepare well in advance and that we have to have a Hydro Strategy developed to make sure that we take advantage of hydro opportunities as they come forward. Thank you.

I just want to bring it to the attention of Members that we’re not allowed to have any food or beverages in the House. So whoever is chewing gum, if they could chuck it. Okay, we’re on page 12-21, activity summary, operations expenditure summary, energy, $7.229 million.

Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I see $1.5 million on page 12-22 for Hydro Strategy and specifically for economic engineering and environmental work on emerging opportunities is required. I wonder if we could get a head’s up on what those emerging opportunities are.

Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will ask the engineer to respond to that. Thank you.