Thank you, Mr. Chair. My thinking is in line with many of the comments that have been brought up. Certainly on the fracking side of things I guess I would like to note that we did learn a lot on the trip that ITI sponsored for committee. Unfortunately, despite being shepherded about by industry, none of this committee, to my knowledge, has ever visited a frack site. So we still have a tremendous amount to learn.

I would say what we do know is that there is some very, very nasty stuff that routinely is both put into the ground and much more very, very nasty stuff is brought up from the ground. The issues happen, of course, when those enter our water or the air we breathe, the food we eat and these sorts of things. Many jurisdictions are just now, after some period of time, employing the fracturing technique – in fact, the very individual who invented fracturing has experienced this – are now recognizing major health costs to their families, to their water, to their livestock, to their municipal water supply and so on. These impacts are sometimes from the water, they’re also from volatile organic compounds that are emitted in gaseous forms, and they’re also from the very highly toxic elements that come out in the process of flaring. These are all, obviously, very rich areas for the department to play a regulatory role, and we want to know that that is happening. In fact, I think we’ve learned so much, but there’s still so much more to learn, both by committee and by Cabinet, I’m sure, and I know you’re on the road there.

I guess I’ll leave that as a comment, noting that certainly many jurisdictions have now decided to disallow fracking, and in fact that number is increasing across the globe in some jurisdictions, right down to community-sized jurisdictions. Obviously, it’s a very serious thing out there. The issue of seismic events, what most of us call earthquakes, being caused by fracking, there’s a report just out for northeastern BC where it’s been demonstrated to cause many, many of their seismic events. Of course, that’s fracturing of rock.

The practice now, a standard price, is to put water down into the ground and trust it’s going to stay there. This is very, very toxic water after it’s been used, and trust it’s going to stay secluded down there. But then when all these earthquakes start happening, that fractures rock and allows that water to migrate away and so on, and cause problems if it

gets into the groundwater and the source of our drinking water.

Another issue on the water that I would appreciate the Minister looking into – and I know he’s into water – is the fact that we are totally, in huge quantities – we’re talking trillions of gallons now – taking water from the surface, from the aqua sphere, if you will, the biosphere, the water cycle, and permanently removing it from that cycle and storing it away so it will never participate in that cycle again within the lifespan of our species. This is pretty serious stuff.

It is particularly serious here for a couple of reasons. First of all, we are sort of at the leading edge of climate change. Climate change is being expressed most severely towards the poles. One of the expressions is, despite higher precipitation relative to our current, we have more evaporation. So we are drying out. That is partly a natural phenomenon as a result of the receding glaciers still, but it is unfortunately being accelerated severely. This is becoming an issue in many parts of the world: desertification related to climate change. We are very vulnerable to that.

This is the second point: our water is fossil water. We don’t have renewable water. The tropics have renewable water because they get deluges there. Even the east and west coasts, they have all kinds of renewable water there. We don’t have that. Ours is fossil water. We use it; it’s gone. It’s not getting replaced. In a region, the scale of activities and removal of water is important. That is proving to be one of the major issues that are just starting to come to the front now. I’m looking forward to seeing the department’s work in that area.

Certainly the Arctic Energy Alliance is an area that I am interested in that we rely on to provide many of our services, particularly in the way of energy expenditures and so on, the energy subsidies and incentives is the word I’m looking for. I am disappointed to see that we are decreasing our Business Support Program when businesses across the Territories… This year, I believe the GNWT is spending close to $1 million in new electricity bills because of the 7 percent increase. This is happening across the Northwest Territories. Our businesses, our residents are experiencing this. We just pull it out of our pocket. No problem, okay, we will put $1 million into that. This is happening every year for the next three or four years of this. Our businesses have to put up with this. How are they going to make it out there? No wonder they are hollering about cost of living.

Here we had a modest $200,000 fund. I don’t believe that we had full uptake on this fund. This was, I think if they had put in $40,000, they got a $10,000 benefit. We have this issue in many places. People are so strapped with the cost of living in our communities, and businesses, that they

don’t have those upfront dollars. Rather than removing the support to businesses, a key part of our Economic Development Strategy, let’s come up with a model to use that money in a way that fits with the challenges our businesses are being faced with.

I guess I do have a few more points, but maybe I can get any response the Minister would care to offer at this moment in time. Thank you, Mr. Chair.