Will the Minister work with the Minister of MACA to then, at this point, delay any further levying of taxes to the homeowners of Tu Nedhe? Thank you.

I will commit to have a discussion with the Minister of MACA on this particular issue.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Your final supplementary, Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you. Will the Minister agree to stop sending out invoices and bills to the homeowners in Tu Nedhe until they’ve had a face-to-face meeting with that homeowner? Thank you.

I will commit to meet with the Member. In fact, I’ll even buy him dinner, and we can do it over dinner to talk about this issue, Mr. Speaker. Of course, other Members that are looking to have sustenance at the expense of a poor, underpaid Minister, of course I’d be happy to have them come along. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Reluctantly, I’d like to go for supper, but my question is for the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment. I’d like to note that Yellowknife Members recently met with representatives of the Smart Communities Society of the Northwest Territories and learned about the issues that they are facing and some of the risks involved with those issues. Could the Minister inform the House on what action this government has taken to strengthen the relationship between the GNWT and the Smart Communities Society of the Northwest Territories? Thank you.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We met with the NWT Smart Communities Society and all the Yellowknife MLAs, including myself, and we recognize the good work that the Smart Society has been doing. We committed to working with the Smart Communities Society to deal with some of the programs that they have been working very hard on over the past three years.

I’d like to point out that over the past three years Smart Society spent about $11 million on their programs, and this year, in order to access $385,000 from the federal government, they were looking to expand their programs across the Northwest Territories.

I am pleased to report that the Government of the Northwest Territories will be working with them and will be investing $101,000 in Smart Society to continue to expand their programs across the Northwest Territories and to look at focusing on some of the last mile kind of initiatives. Thank you.

Thanks for the comments from the Minister. It sounds like that’s going to at least take care of the alligators that are latched onto their ankles right now and I appreciate that action. It seems from this that the government is, indeed, going to take full advantage of the programs and services available through the Smart Communities Society. But for the full benefit of all the people in all the communities in the Northwest Territories, considerable work remains to be done, and I’m assuming from this action that the government agrees with this, so I’m wondering what action is proposed, what next steps is the Minister thinking of, including whether his department will continue to take the lead or whether other departments may become involved to ensure the sustainability of these services. Mahsi.

In the short term we will be doing up a contribution agreement with the Smart Society, and the reason for that is, as everybody knows, there is an election coming up and we can’t commit a future government on future funding, so we will also endeavour to include that in the transition document.

I think it’s very important to note that in the future we’ll be looking at expanding to other initiatives, and long term, hopefully, it could become part of one of the TFC finance projects in the future. But that’s in the long term and we’ll have to wait and see what happens in the next government. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Great Slave, Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister responsible for the NWT Power Corporation, Premier Roland. Earlier today in my Member’s statement I highlighted the increased cost to replace the Bluefish dam. Can the Minister responsible for the NWT Power Corp please confirm this afternoon what the budget for this project is and how that budget has changed over the last several months? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Premier, Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The confirmed budget with contingency is targeted now at $37.4 million.

I thank the Minister for that. I’m curious how this increase will affect the power rates in Yellowknife, Mr. Speaker. Can the Minister tell me what the forecasted impact of this project is on power rates in Yellowknife? Thank you.

When this project was first proposed there was an estimate given to the PUB as this project had to be filed through them as well. The targeted impact was in the neighbourhood of up to between 1.5 to 2 cents per kilowatt hour. So that was budgeted prior to any changes in the budget. With this change we’re looking at 2.5 cents per kilowatt hour impact in this region. That does affect the rest of the communities because our Power Support Program, as we’ve changed it, is based on the Yellowknife rate. Thank you.

Thank you. I wonder, is there any specific cost mitigation measures that the Power Corp is using to try to lower the cost of this project. Are there numbers? We were talking about final numbers. Is the $33 million with the $4 million contingency, are they the final numbers or is there any possibility that the final cost of this project in the impact of power rates across the Northwest Territories and Yellowknife will be lower and how does the Power Corporation work towards trying to control these costs and keep them down, Mr. Speaker?

Thank you. The approach that the Power Corp has taken on this project on a number of areas was to minimize the costs. For example, after going out for our fee, the corporation chose a contractor to negotiate the price down, because the one portion, the construction portion was higher than anticipated, and they worked that number back down through an agreement in construction. There is also a portion of the contact that if there’s a savings on moving ahead on this project at lower than expected prices, that will reduce the overall impact, as well. So the

corporation has taken a number of steps to try to minimize the project.

One of the areas we find as the reason for the increase was at the initial stages, it was deemed an emergency. The first program that was put together wasn’t as detailed as was needed, and through the environmental process there was a number of factors that adjusted the plan that was initially designed. So the design had changed, and requirements had changed and that impacted the numbers upward. We’re hoping, now that we have the numbers established and set, that there may be even some savings achieved as we go forward with construction. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Your final, short supplementary, Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This Assembly worked awfully hard to try to find ways to reduce the power rates in communities, and as a result, the rates stayed the same in Yellowknife, but overall we did a good job of trying to reduce the rates in the whole Territories. This rate obviously is a concern; this rate increase is obviously a concern. I’d like to ask the Minister, if power increases as a result of the Bluefish construction, if we can’t avoid increasing our territorial power rates as a result of this, are there any programs or is there anything that we can do as a Legislature and the Minister can do as the Minister responsible to residents to help with the impacts of this potential increase to our rates after we worked so hard to bring them down.

Thank you. The estimation of, for example, 2.5 cents per kilowatt hour will impact residents of about $17 a month. We know it is an increase. We’ve tried to minimize the overall construction costs. One of the things we’ve done with the contract is risk sharing, and that may be able to lower the actual amount that we’ve budgeted and reduce the contingency, for example. So right now the process as it would work out is the construction would have to be completed and the overall budget looked at and the impact then passed on. So it would be beyond the life of the 16

th

Assembly. Well, it will have to be after the

final completion of the project that rates would be adjusted. So I can’t speak for the 17

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Assembly on

what they might do to try to mitigate something of this nature. Thank you.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are directed to the Minister of the

Housing Corporation in conjunction to a written question that I requested of the Minister to give me information on the negotiated contracts with Housing. Mr. Speaker, it’s important to realize that capital projects are the means of developing a lot of our community economies, especially building capacity and also bringing down the high cost of living. More importantly, it’s bringing down our social costs for the high unemployment numbers we have in our communities, and also developing the local economies and developing our local workforce to give them the opportunities so that they can build their skills in the areas of apprenticeships, and more importantly, give them the opportunity, in most cases, for their first job.

Mr. Speaker, I’d just to ask the Minister, in light of the information that I received, in five years with three negotiated contracts with an expense of $800,000 or $876,000, but in the same period the contracts for the same three communities were $9.67 million, Mr. Speaker, it shows you that the distribution of wealth in capital projects in the Northwest Territories is not really being expended in our communities but outside our communities. So I’d like to ask the Minister exactly what is his department doing to remedy this situation so that we can see the return of our capital investments in our communities and they stay in our communities.