I noticed in the document they talk about a draft Hydro Strategy. When are we going to be publishing this strategy and identifying the information that’s been compiled so far today or is it going to be over a couple of years?

The draft Hydro Strategy was released approximately two years ago and we expect to have a finalized Hydro Strategy in 2011.

The reason I ask is because I haven’t seen information in my region regarding the hydro potential that it has. I know there’s been baseline work done on that. We always talk about the Ross Dam and the potential of the hydro site on the Mackenzie River in the Gwich’in Settlement Area which has been talked about. Again you’re talking a dam that big and you’re talking about what they have in northern Quebec or Manitoba. There’s that potential but it’s a question of how much baseline data has been pulled together. I’d like to know where the data and information is for my riding.

We’ll commit to getting information from NTEC that we can provide to the Member with regard to information on potential hydro in his riding.

I couldn’t help hearing that they’re having problems with the Fort Simpson in-stream hydro project. I’m just wondering, if that doesn’t work there is there a possibility of moving it somewhere that there are calmer waters or smaller trees? Is there a chance of moving it up the valley where we might not have that big a problem?

We are committed to making hydrokinetic work, so we will work with NTEC to place it in a location where it has the best chance to succeed.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Krutko? No? Alright. Next on my list is Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do appreciate the department working in this area.

This is front-line work and we’re bound to have some kerfuffles along the way like big sunken trees running into our equipment. I appreciate the persistence to work with this new technology. I wanted to follow up in that respect just with the Bear River in-stream hydro. As the Minister mentioned, I was privileged to join him on a trip briefly with a bunch of people from Deline to look at a piece of technology that looks very positive. I just want to confirm that the Minister’s assessment is that does look fairly positive and ask whether he has any idea what costs might be for that technology yet, recognizing that it is very new.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We are working with the company that has developed the technology and they have indicated that they still need some time to finalize the cost, and in order to do that they need a proposal from us so that they have all the parameters. RSW have done a lot of preliminary work. They’ve looked at the hydro potential of the majority of the rivers in the Northwest Territories so they have a very good idea of where the best potential for in-stream hydro to work. So we are looking at Deline and other possible locations in the Northwest Territories.

Thanks to the Minister for those remarks. I think that’s pretty exciting technology that we’re talking about. On the Lutselk’e mini-hydro project I want to find out what the process is for determining whether or not we get the green infrastructure dollars that makes that project a go and how much do we need. That can be a time-consuming application process. Have we started that process towards achieving those resources?

Earlier this summer, or I should say the summer of 2010, we had the opportunity to meet with Minister Baird who was the Minister of Transportation at the time and the lead Minister on infrastructure. We met with him to follow up on a letter we had written to him requesting funding for under the Green Infrastructure Funding. We had requested funding for the Fort Providence transmission line and also for Lutselk’e in the amount of $6 million. He committed that he would take the proposal and review it very seriously, and we followed up a few times but we still haven’t received a definitive answer from the federal government as of yet.

I don’t think it’s news that many of us on committee have been suggesting that the Canada Building Project and stimulation dollars should have been going to projects like this that save us on our high operational costs of energy. I think that was a major missed opportunity. I think, I guess I basically hope that the department will be aggressive in getting after this and nailing this down. As I say, the building season’s here very

soon and we don’t seem to know yet whether we have those dollars. I’m not very hopeful yet again for this project.

I’d like to ask the Minister how many employees we have in NTEC, the NWT Energy Corporation, and the Hydro Corporation and what are their areas of specialty, those that are technical.

I don’t have a specific number but they do have technical engineers and specialists and policy people that work in this area and we rely on them for most of the detailed technical work with regard to hydro.

I wonder if the Minister could provide us with that information at a later date. I just note the apparently high contracting dollars, $1.25 million for the Hydro Strategy and so on, that are being contracted out. It seems like we do have the expertise. I have had occasion to meet some of these people and they seem very qualified and whatnot. I haven’t met them all and I think it would be great to know that.

I’d like to talk about the Electricity Rate Review briefly here. I’m wondering if and when the Minister will come clean, so to speak, about how much GNWT is paying extra for this buy-down in electricity rates. Just briefly, the sorts of things that I’m aware of are the $3 million a year to buy down the rate riders. Businesses which were previously paying millions in power rates are considerably lower now. I’m happy to see that but I’m wondering what that amount is per year. We’re forgoing a Power Corporation dividend of $3.5 million. We’re probably over $10 million per year already for the next two years. Of course we’ve raised the thresholds beyond which residents and municipalities, I believe, pay the true cost of power, so there are probably some extra costs here. There’s a quarter million dollars in the cost of review. Certainly there are other costs that have accrued to GNWT behind the scenes that I haven’t detailed here. I’m wondering if the Minister plans to give us a straightforward accounting of the dollars that are now accruing to taxpayers rather than ratepayers in order to buy down this reduced power rate in our thermal communities. I think it’s important that we know, because if we are not transparent about these things, Mr. Chairman, we don’t know where to put our money to actually reduce the cost of power. I am talking about real reductions in the cost of power. Thank you.

I will be pleased to provide the Member with information on the number of employees with NTEC and with regards to an accounting of, or a reconciliation of, the numbers. We are quite open about it. We have provided this information on a regular basis to committee, and committee is well aware of what we did and it is no big secret. They dividend as they review, the team recommended that was part of what was causing

the high cost of electricity. That will remain with NTEC for this year and potentially for further years.

With regards to the buy-down of the rate riders, we used money that had been identified for commercial subsidies of $3 million a year and our expectation is that there will be savings in the Territorial Power Subsidy Program, which was forecasted to go as high as $14 million and it will be substantially less, so our expectation is that within two years we will have a lot more flexibility. There will be savings that could be... If the future government decides to apply it to energy costs in the future, that is their prerogative. As well, the energy costs of the government remain the same. Part of the direction was that government rates would remain the same and it is not unusual, other jurisdictions do that routinely. Look at the Yukon, they have frozen all the rates, different rates at different levels, including government rates that pay a higher rate than local consumers. So we are quite prepared to provide all of that information again to committee and to the Member. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you Minister McLeod. Time is up and we are on page 12-21, Industry, Tourism and Investment. Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just want to say that I appreciate Minister providing that. It will be great to see it in one package all put together. We did get it in various formats from time to time. I heard the Minister say that we used the $3 million as a commercial power subsidy and although that was contemplated at one time, I don’t believe that was done. I think we simply came up with different rates for commercial power rates and used those $3 million to buy down the rate riders for everybody. I just want to make sure we got accurate information on that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am not sure what he means by conflated, but there was $3 million for two years in the EPI and we used that to pay down the rate riders and this resulted in the commercial rates decreasing in the thermal communities. Thank you.

I guess there is still some more exploration to be done. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. No question, more of a comment. Minister McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We committed to provide information so perhaps it will become clearer when the information is provided. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Minister McLeod. We are on page 12-21, Industry, Tourism

and Investment, activity summary, energy, operations expenditure summary, $6.019 million.