Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of energy, Minister Bob McLeod. It follows up on a statement from the
other day on the conversion of communities to gas energy systems.
Norman Wells and Inuvik are up against the wall with their natural gas energy systems and, of course, we know the high cost of converting communities, yet we appear to be going down the road of committing new communities to the inevitable end of non-renewable energy supplies. Feasibility studies have been prepared on the conversion of Tulita, Fort Simpson, and Fort Good Hope to natural gas as the principal community energy supply. In this day and age I’m wondering why these contracts were not written to provide a comparative cost-benefit analysis of at least two options: conversion to gas or development of a local renewable energy infrastructure.