Thank you, Madam Chair. This is an example of the sorts of management we could be doing to avoid these sorts of ongoing costs. I’m not satisfied with the earlier discussion, nor would I like to see this just provided in the budget on a routine basis. These costs are nothing short of ridiculous in this day and age. We insist on subsidizing energy costs and utility costs more and more, rather than dealing with them and reducing the costs. This is $2 million plus, Madam Chair, for the two items and I understand that the FMB has
asked the Housing Corporation to report on how they are managing their energy costs.
Unfortunately this is a reflection of the government as a whole. Our opportunities to address these pass by year after year and we keep paying through the nose. Fortunately some of our residents and some of our businesses are finally moving out on their own and removing themselves from the system, providing their own energy, which of course makes our costs even greater and less efficient. So that is a big question, but the heating fuel, $600,000-plus, electricity $1 million-plus, these are big sums of money, Madam Chair, and they could easily put in infrastructure such as, for example, distributed energy systems and a distributed energy grid whereby people could start contributing to the grid and reducing costs.
There’s also very, very little that we’re doing to encourage energy conservation and so on, provide alternative, but cheaper forms of energy. I just don’t see the commitment of this government to that and I see a willingness to continue to just pay the piper on these things. So I guess, you know, what can we say? We can only bang our heads against a brick wall so much and I’m willing to butt my head even more this time around. So I’ll leave it at that.