Mr. Speaker, I can explore that, but being the most expensive purchase someone will ever make in their life, they would take the necessary precautions to make sure they have somebody go and inspect the unit before they buy it, and most reputable and good builders will have a warranty on their product because they are quite comfortable. You look at a lot of the builders we have here in the Northwest Territories. They all live here amongst us. It is to their benefit to have a good product that they warranty, because you may run into them and you would have them come and fix the unit or anything that needs to be worked on. The days of the fly-by-night operators that came and built units and disappeared into the night are long gone. I think we see that today.

I will tell the Member that I will have a discussion with the department and see if this is something that we can maybe move on a little sooner and the amount of work and resources that we may be required to do. I will commit to that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Time for question period has expired; however, I will allow the Member a supplementary question. Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to thank the Minister for taking the issues as serious as I do and being willing to address it by looking at it and see if there is something we can do.

Mr. Speaker, a lot of homes fail even after a good inspection. That is ultimately the concern. Mr. Speaker, if the NWT had a policy to ensure that that would be the case, does the Minister see a need for this to become a government policy for government housing? What type of inspection do we have from a MACA point of view on this type of industry that would any of our new houses built through Housing Program, we don’t provide any inspection? I know

his housing experience and housing maintainer would probably be very clear on saying that they have spent a lot of time repairing brand new houses. That is the type of issue that I am referring to. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I can assure the Member that all Housing homes that are built are inspected by the Housing Corporation and are signed before we take responsibility for these units. When we get the unit from the builder, there is usually a warranty that comes with these units. I can assure the Member that we just don’t take the keys and walk in without the proper inspections. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Before I go on with orders of the day, the Chair is going to call a short break.

---SHORT RECESS

Back to orders of the day. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.

Mr. Speaker, I’m seeking unanimous consent to return to item 7, oral questions, on the orders of the day.

---Unanimous consent granted

The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Minister responsible for the NWT Power Corporation, Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thank the Member for that question. It gives me an opportunity to highlight a number of changes that we’ve made recently within the Power Corporation to better address the customers that we serve across the Northwest Territories. We’ve recently added -- as we’ve provided information across the Territories -- a new CEO, Mr. David Axford, to the Power Corporation, who is situated in Hay River. Also, we’ve brought on a new chair of the board of

the Power Corporation and we’ve added a new member for the Sahtu to the board as well.

It was unfortunate that the incident occurred in Norman Wells. As the Member has pointed out, the generation of power happens through the Imperial Oil facility. We have backup and when the initial problems occurred we did have, I believe, the backup unit fired up, but we had problems in the transmission side. After reviewing, we had to send a team up to do that.

We are working with the community. I was informed that the CEO and the chief operating officer of the Power Corporation met with the town council on February 1

st

to deal with some of the issues that

came out of the outage.

The Minister indicated there were several new personalities within NTPC. Hopefully this will satisfy residents in the Sahtu, especially the community of Norman Wells.

I want to ask the Minister if his office is going to respond in terms of having a meeting between himself and the town council of Norman Wells to look at some of the issues that were raised in the January 7

th

letter addressed to him about the

response and role of NTPC.

As I have committed to Members of this House, when invited to a community we take all the opportunity we can to do that, so I’d be prepared to travel into the community with the Member to deal with this and other issues that may arise. I’m hoping that the initial meeting and the discussion that occurred with the CEO and the chief operating officer with the council has started a process in place of continuous updates and contact as we look towards the future. I am committed to travelling with the Member. At some point we can find our calendars aligned and travel into the Sahtu.

Certainly the Town of Norman Wells and myself are very pleased that the Premier/Minister is making commitments to come to Norman Wells to talk to the Town of Norman Wells on these issues.

I want to ask the Minister about the backup system and the adequacy of the power plant. Is that something that’s going to be looked into right away? I know there were discussions to see how fit this power plant could be of use to the community if the power does go out in the next week or so.

On the power generation side, I know the Power Corporation itself is involved with the parties on the conversion of natural gas to diesel for the community of Hay River, so we’re much more involved. With the new attitude of the CEO and the board, I think we will be much more proactive in working and engaging with our communities to find satisfactory solutions to power issues with our communities.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Final supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.

Mr. Speaker, can the Minister provide to the House if there is any type of analysis as to why NTPC does not have representation in the Sahtu, specifically a request to have one in Norman Wells? I know there are personnel in Inuvik, Fort Simpson and Fort Smith that have to fly into the region for situations like this. Can he bring that also to the attention of the regions, how we could have representation in Norman Wells to expand our support services to the communities?

The board and new CEO are looking at the operations of the Power Corporation. They’re taking into consideration a recent report that was done on the structure of the Power Corporation and looking at it from an operational side, again with more focus on customer relations. I look forward to the work that they’re coming up with. I know the board is engaged in that.

As for operations, I know that at times even the community of Inuvik, for example, with a number of serious outages, had to have staff flown in from other parts of our Territory to help deal with the outages and issues that arose from them. As the board looks at the operation’s structure, we’ll have to see what type of recommendations they may come out with and changes they may come out with in their operational structure. Of course, I will include Members in that and we’re trying to find some time that works for all parties to actually have the new chair and CEO meet with Members.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. The honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is directed to the Minister of Finance. One of the concerns that have been raised in regard to the AIP and devolution agreement is the formula being used for other net fiscal benefit and the government having a limit on the cap of 5 percent of gross expenditures under the agreement. I’d like to ask the Minister of Finance if we have taken into consideration mega projects such as the pipeline down the Mackenzie Highway. I think we’re looking somewhere in excess of $900 million. I’d like to know if the government has done an assessment on how this formula is going to work at the end of the day for these major projects that will benefit the federal government or ourselves.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. The honourable Minister of Finance, Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Those facts have been considered. If

the day comes when we generate as much wealth as Alberta, for example, then we won’t require territorial formula financing. We will be able to make do on what we generate in wealth out of the Northwest Territories. Until that point, the net fiscal benefit policy and agreement that is being proposed is there with the cap and the 50 percent. Yes, we have looked at those factors.

Again, I’d like to ask the Premier with regard to justifying the net fiscal benefit, and using the cap of 5 percent of government gross expenditure base I think this will seriously affect the GNWT and Aboriginal governments with regard to our share of resources revenues, in which I see a major increase in share revenues going directly to the federal government from all these large projects because we have the cap net fiscal benefit. I’d just like to know from the Minister if we have an idea of how much money is going to flow to the federal government on these major projects compared to what’s going to flow to the GNWT.

We will get 100 percent of the royalties but there’s a 50 percent offset against our territorial formula financing. We can keep up to the cap of 5 percent of the gross expenditure base.

I would point out, as well, I just saw a news story on CBC where the folks over in the Yukon were already making arrangements to see if they could start renegotiating their agreement because what they’ve seen on the table for the Northwest Territories is considerably better than what they were able to negotiate.

The other thing to keep in mind as the AIP goes forward and the final agreement is signed, there will be review periods built in periodically going forward.