I don’t have the timeline with me here. I will commit to providing that information back to the Member as soon as the department is able to give me the details on when that strategy will be in place.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister responsible for the NWT Power Corporation and it’s my hope I can get answers beyond finalizing devolution as the answer to all of my questions. The hydro supply for Yellowknife and Behchoko was recently knocked out by the Canadian Military’s current exercises for our protection. We face a huge bill for one kilometre of transmission line repairs, elevated fuel costs replacing hydro with diesel power for at least 10 days, and associated expenses. Will the Minister be sending an invoice to the federal Minister of National Defence for a refund of these costs or can we anticipate that NTPC is already beavering a way of revising upward their GRA for higher electricity rates to pay for this?

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Minister responsible for the NWT Power Corporation, Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Devolution clearly is a priority of this government, but clearly in this instance I agree with the Member, it’s not germane to the matter at hand. Yes, NTPC is hard at work on their general rate application. As well, we are hard at work in making sure we get power up and running and we get off diesel. We’ll be sorting through as they do the debrief of what happened, and look at where the costs and all the things that happened that contributed to this unfortunate circumstance to see where obligations lie. We will follow up once that’s done.

I appreciate that answer. We need to know the total bill resulting from this incident. Will the Minister document these new costs, including replacement of materials, generating fuel, staff time, additional equipment charges, travel, charter, and so on – everything, basically – and report this total cost to the Assembly?

Once all those accrued costs are in and we have a clear understanding of what they are, and we’ve done all the final analysis and bookkeeping, I will provide that information to committee since it’s going to be some time before we gather in this Legislature. So I will commit to provide that information to committee.

Thanks to the Minister for that commitment. One has to question the care that was taken in the planning of these exercises to ensure

protection of public safety and infrastructure. Has this government contacted the commanders of these exercises and requested assurance and a detailed explanation of measures being taken to prevent further harm to people and vital infrastructure or will we do that contact soon?

Yes, we are fully engaged with DND both in terms of the immediate response, looking at what happened. As well, we have folks looking at what caused this, what needs to be done in the future, the issue of accounting that the Member has talked about. We are engaged and we will be fully engaged with them until this whole matter is put to rest.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final supplementary, Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks for that response. There’s also the tragic side to this, obviously, as the power outage may have been directly related to a serious workplace incident at the airport. I offer my sympathies to the family of the injured man in hopes of his recovery and I know we all do. There have also been road accidents that could have been more serious. This government needs to strenuously state to the Department of National Defence that safety comes first and exercise objectives come second. Should be obvious but maybe it isn’t. Will the Minister take that on?

I know that the Department of National Defence military place the safety of its members above all, even though they often go in harm’s way on our behalf. In this instance I think it’s premature to assume that there was any dereliction of duty or things weren’t done properly or that they sacrificed safety for some other expedient motive. I think we have to be careful, be measured. Let’s find out what happened, and there will be plenty of time to ascribe blame once we have all the facts.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to follow up on my colleague Mr. Hawkins’ questions about salt on the roads and the potential environmental impact and significance of that. One only has to travel south crossing the NWT border into Alberta and see the difference on the highways to realize that what they are using in the Mackenzie County in northern Alberta does not work on the roads. If you go to the wreckers in High Level and look at how many totalled vehicles there are in that junkyard you will see how many vehicles roll on northern Alberta’s Mackenzie County highways in

the winter, because they are using something more environmentally friendly called potash. It’s some derivative of potash. What it actually does is polish the ice on the road. It does not interact with the ice at normal temperatures as salt would or calcium chloride would and it’s killing people. It is affecting the residents of the Northwest Territories who have to find their way south going over that road. I would ask the Minister of Transportation if he would seek to communicate with his Alberta counterpart who would be responsible for highways, to find out what kind of success they have found in using an alternative to our traditional calcium chloride and salt on their roads.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Minister responsible for Transportation, Mr. David Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would certainly look forward to that discussion with my counterpart in Alberta and we’ll get back to the Member once that does happen.

So although we have some scientific data that would indicate that what we put on the roads may be finding its way into our waterways, I think we need to weigh that against the risk to the travelling public when conditions on the road are ice and a different alternative product is used. Perhaps the Minister could also request the stats for the number of serious motor vehicle accidents that have occurred compared to when they used to use a product like salt or calcium chloride before. I’d like to know the comparison of the statistics for motor vehicle accidents in the jurisdictions that have turned to this more environmentally friendly alternative.

I will get that level of detail for the Member, but last year in the NWT there wasn’t anyone that perished on our highways here in the Northwest Territories. I agree with the Member that we need to balance public safety with the environmental concerns. I will get the information for both Members.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Mrs. Groenewegen.

That’s good, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Minister responsible for Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The policies are in place for a reason and they can be amended as well. Based on what the discussions are that we’ve had with income security programming, we’ve made some drastic changes in 2007 to increase our funding. When the Member speaks to the senior fuel subsidy, I believe he’s referring to there are areas that we need to explore. We don’t want to have an impact on a senior’s pension when it comes to subsidies. There are people living in the household. I understand some people are living there helping out, but some people do take advantage of the elderly people in the community. We have to be mindful of that. It is across the board. It’s not only the Department of Education, Culture and Employment. We have policy that impacts other areas within other departments, as well, on the household income. We have to be mindful of that.