Thank you, Mr. Chair. Welcome to this plan for the budget there. Minister and your staff, certainly, a couple points I want to make this afternoon and then we can go through the business plans in detail.
I do want to say that the challenges that this department has had to do with the diesel price increases that they seem to be dealing with. In the document it said that since 2007-08 that the diesel prices have increased by 57 percent. I look forward to the types of initiatives you will have to deal with this issue of the high cost of energy in our communities by implementing or initiating alternative energy heating sources.
You have…(inaudible)…of the wood pellets, biomass and the different types of energy initiatives that are going in various communities. In my community you don’t see very much of those initiatives or any type of hydro or especially wood pellets or biomass. You see them mostly in southern parts of the Northwest Territories and little projects going, I should say huge projects going on
here and there. For my region we are not very successful in attracting the attention from the government to put in an alternative heating source so we have to revert to the good old diesel and natural gas. Even natural gas isn’t even safe to say anymore. Our reliability comes from the high cost of diesel and we all want to make some changes. However, we need the support of government and we’re hoping that this government here will be warming up to an invitation by the Sahtu and say we could put in an alternative source of heating. We have done some small projects such as the solar panel heating in our swimming pools. However, there needs to be a little more capital infrastructure commitment to putting some other projects that could save the communities a lot of money. In the small communities, to heat our community arenas it costs a lot of money for the communities to run it.
I think you pretty well have a sense of where I’m going with this so I’m going to be asking some questions. Through the business plans we also looked at the water upgrades in our communities. We’ve done some pilot projects making sure the water upgrades are safe and that training is there. The cost of taking over those plants and the infrastructure is quite expensive. I noted from my visits in my communities that even though we do have a New Deal and the funding, that the maintenance, the amount of times you have to change the filters costs a lot and we just don’t have the money there. So the communities are somewhat reluctant to take over the operations.
I do want to say I support your officials and your staff to look at how we get effective video conferencing in our health centres, especially in our health centres. The Mackenzie Valley Fibre Optic Link is a very good initiative and you have my 100 percent support for that. I would like to see that because I know that will cut down for the efficiency. We could have that hooked up into our schools and especially in our health centres. So, Minister, you’ve got my support on that initiative, no questions asked. So I want to support you on that initiative.
Two other points I have, Mr. Chair, and I’ll close off. The Apprenticeship Program has been very successful. The Settlement Maintainers Program has been good for the small communities because it worked in the past and we did have those programs and somehow we got away from that. The last government made it a priority to get those programs back into our communities. There are many benefits to have those programs there. So the Apprenticeship Program is good and the Settlement Maintainers Program is pretty unique because our own people are doing things that they didn’t at one time think they could do. Now they’ve got the training and we’re empowering them and we’re setting up good role models saying that this person can do it, that’s my uncle or that’s my
auntie. So we’re setting up a path of other younger students in our communities could maybe one day be one of those people. This government is contributing to the growth of our communities through their capacity.
My last point I want to ask the Minister is to take a real serious look at the energy projects in our communities. We need the wood pellet system. We have some facilities going up in the Sahtu that maybe a huge wood pellet boiler can go in there to cut costs. I don’t know too much of the detailed stuff; however, I think that some of the costs we have were woodstoves. We had woodstoves in some of our places. Maybe I’m not speaking to the right department, but for your department having wood pellets in the school or the health centre, it makes a huge difference, unless Imperial Oil or some oil company decides to build a refinery in one of our communities, then our fuel would be cheaper, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. So I look forward to the Minister looking at the various alternative heating supply systems in our region.
It costs us quite a bit of dollars and it costs this government a lot of dollars to continue using the diesel. If we do not get that type of support, then I’m all for diesel and natural gas, but that’s what keeps my people warm. If we have to pay the price, then we pay the price. So unless this government makes a change in the Sahtu with the hydro, with wood pellet, biomass or other geothermal, start looking at that type of heating, alternative energies in our communities and putting some of that infrastructure in our community, then I’m for it. I have a list of the projects in one community and it’s amazing how much money you pour into one community and that community has a low cost of living.
So I look forward to this Minister’s leadership in seeing what can be done in the three years on the planning or on the budget, everything, knowing everything. If he can deliver on a couple, I would be very happy and I think the people would appreciate it.
I know I said a lot in 10 minutes. So I want to leave it at that and thank the Minister and his staff coming through the Sahtu on a tour. We really appreciate that. Thank you.