Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Based on this government’s adventures in hydro power plant and transmission line building over the last 15 years, an unfortunate pattern is emerging. It starts with a modest community proposal to generate local hydro power. It could be Deline with their run-of-river proposal on the Bear River, Lutselk’e with their proposal for the Snowdrift, Whati on the La Martre River, or even Fort Smith’s desire to make use of wasted power on the Taltson system.
These proposals were all able to show long-term savings for both the community and this government that spends many millions subsidizing the cost of producing power with diesel generators.
Rather than listening to what the community wants, our leaders instead dream up a glorious mega project. They look at their maps and dream of power lines criss-crossing the NWT. Perhaps they look at maps of the provinces and wish they could have a power grid just like them.
Rather than face realities, they come up with a low-ball price and then proceed to spend millions of dollars on studies. A few years later, they quietly announce that the project has been shelved because it costs too much.
In Deline, the run-of-river project was transformed into 100 megawatt power for the pipeline project which went nowhere. In Lutselk’e and Fort Smith, we have Taltson hydro for the diamond mines. After investing tens of millions, the project was cancelled.
Just recently, the government announced that the Whati transmission line, which started as a modest, small hydro proposal, is cancelled because after a decade of consideration they concluded it will cost $20 million more than the original proposal. For the fourth time in Whati, we are back to square one.
Meanwhile, we have spent literally hundreds of millions of dollars subsidizing diesel power. Had we built these small hydro plants when the communities asked for them 10 or 15 years ago, we would be well on our way to having paid them off
and residents and businesses would be enjoying stable or reduced power costs.
Rather than learning from this experience, we just dream bigger. We are currently spending millions studying a transmission line from Yellowknife to Saskatchewan that is estimated at $800 million, four times the cost of the Deh Cho Bridge.
Mr. Speaker, the NWT is a vast, sparsely populated territory. We need to be innovative. We need power solutions that are scaled to our communities and our geography.
I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.
---Unanimous consent granted