Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Next on my list is Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just wanted to respond to the concern of my colleague Mr. Ramsay, who was suggesting that he was going to have difficulty cleaning up after maybe not his pet, but other people’s pets or that people were going to have difficulty with their pets. It made me think that perhaps there’s a new business out there waiting to happen. People are going to need something to pick up their pet waste, so maybe somebody in the Territory can design a pet waste container, a reusable pet waste container. Get some funding from the government, build a little business and get it going. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Didn’t really hear a question, but I know the Minister wants to respond to it anyway. Minister Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am not sure about some of the other larger communities, but I think Yellowknife is the only one that has that bylaw. I do know that if you look at the bags on my door, there are produce bags, bread bags, you are going to have any number of bags that would be more than adequate to do the job required to waste not want not, as it were, as you move behind your canine. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Next on my list is Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. No comment on the last comment.

---Laughter

I’d like to start by looking at the Biomass Strategy. I am wondering where we are with that, when it’s going to be available and what the timing is being considered in terms of implementation. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, there are a number of facets to the Biomass Strategy that is currently under review. We have things like setting up plans to swap woodstoves, encourage people to buy woodstoves. The bigger, more fundamental issue is going to be the co-generation, the generation of heat.

In the smaller communities we are looking at pilot projects, as the Member knows, to check out some of the technologies available to do a number of things. We are interested in heat, the way to heat communities and the ability to generate electricity with biomass and there are different types of technology that are out there. Once we are clear on a type of technology, then we can start rolling that piece out. We are going to be converting, as we’ve shown here, larger facilities to pellets and we are going to look at putting that money into a central fund to be able to…the savings that are going to be realized by biomass versus diesel, to put that money into a fund to allow us to do more retrofits in government buildings. So there are a number of pieces that are underway.

We are also looking at some jurisdictions in Europe that are far ahead of us in terms of how they use these particular technologies and we’d like to be able to look at and see that we aren’t trying to reinvent the wheel. We have all these different areas that we’re looking at. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Of course, I am quite supportive of this approach. I wonder if gasification, wood gasification, is one of the technologies that are being looked at. I have to note here that I have seen this operating in a home. Actually, the father-in-law of Mr. Wunderlin of Arctic Green Energy, as well as an apartment building-sized operation in Victoria, B.C. It’s apparently one of the most efficient uses of wood, biomass. I’m wondering if the Minister could confirm that is part of the consideration of the Biomass Strategy. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We are, as a government, looking for the best technology that would be the most appropriate and then available and effective and efficient that we can find recognizing that it’s an area of energy production that is not very prevalent yet. I think the Member can rest assured that as we do our work to try and focus in on the technology or technologies that are the best, we want to look at all options. We have no particular one configuration that we think is the silver bullet. We recognize there is going to be many options and the difficulty is going to be making the best decision we can to get moving. Thank you.

I also wanted to ask and perhaps it will pop up under forest management later, but in association with the Biomass Strategy, are there community forest inventories, community sustainable harvesting plans and support for implementation of those plans on the ground for communities being planned as part of the Biomass Strategy or is that perhaps a parallel stand-alone exercise? Thank you.

The short answer is yes. Part of the planning and money that we have available is to do the community inventories in addition to the broader inventories we’d have to do as a government on the vaster tracts of boreal forest. As we look at community energy plans, that is a piece that we have some funding put aside for to work with communities. Thank you.

I appreciate the Minister’s comments there. Again, I have personal experience and it didn’t seem too difficult in working with the community to get forestry to do the community forest inventory, but the next stages somehow seemed to be insurmountable so they will require a particular focus, I think, and perhaps experience being gained along the way. Just a comment there.

One other question here is, what is our experience with the availability of, sort of, expertise in renewable energy technologies in the North, of the department? And if it’s, sort of, not there, if we’re having to go south quite a bit or find it’s tied up with just a couple of projects, what is this department doing to ensure development of this expertise in the North? Thank you.

There is, I think, a significant amount of knowledge and expertise in the north. Some of it is within the department, some of it is developed through personal interest or business opportunities. I know there are folks in Fort Smith. I know there are folks in Yellowknife. I know there are people that have proposals before us from other communities as well.

Of course, we are looking to other jurisdictions; we don’t want to reinvent the wheel and, where necessary, we will contact people outside of our jurisdiction. We are planning, as I indicated, a fact-finding trip to go and look at some in-use technologies. We think there’s some northern capacity here as well. We continue to hire folks. There are some graduates coming, interns that we can put to use as well in this area. Thank you.

My last question here is on greenhouse gas emissions inventories. I know it’s a real sticky wicket and it’s a very difficult undertaking. I believe the department has done it in 1996 and 2001 and probably due for another one, and I’m wondering when we might expect the next inventory that tells us where we are on our greenhouse gas emissions to be completed. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, that issue had been on the agenda for our climate change committee today at lunch, but we got bumped by another more pressing matter so that is still on the agenda for the meeting that we’re attempting to reschedule maybe late this week or early next week. I don’t have that detail before me right now, but it is on the agenda to have a look at, as the Member indicated, the sticky wicket of nailing down the targets and how do we measure them. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. I understand that meeting is going to be Monday at 11:00. Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. That’s really all I had. I realize we will be getting an update and I was just wondering if we had an estimate of when that would be available. I think we’ll have some more in-depth discussion. I know it is very difficult. It takes a focused and comprehensive effort, but obviously we need to know where we are on the trend line here so that we can focus our efforts even better. That’s it for now. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. No question. More of a comment. I have nobody else on my list. We’re on page 13-17, activity summary, environment, operations expenditure summary, $9.174 million.

Moving along to page 13-18. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There was some talk earlier about the issue of pellets, getting pellets to the North, producing pellets in the North. What are the advantages of using pellets over wood? Why not wood? You don’t need electricity to run wood

heaters and so on. What’s the advantage of pellets? Thank you.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Minister Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. There are a number of advantages especially for large applications. In terms of the product: the stove, what you need to burn, you don’t need the same kind of chimneys, it’s much easier to get insurance, it’s recognized as safer, there is less handling of the material, it tends to be automated, the pellets that are properly squeezed have to meet standards that give them the equivalence to hardwood so they burn more efficiently and with less ash. To those of us that are traditionalist for home heating, that’s a choice, that like I’ve made for normal wood. In terms of the big applications like the North Slave Correctional Centre, it’s much easier. The Chief Jimmy Bruneau School and all these other larger operations where you...Plus you can fill a hopper and you can do regular checks as opposed to where you had a wood furnace you’d need basically a stoker to be going around to load logs and clean ashes. Thank you.