Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We, being the Members of this House and the public, were led to believe the work on the Highway No. 4 bypass, which went through some potential high-risk arsenic hotspots, was vetted by our Department of Transportation, ENR and the Giant Mine Remediation Team. We were assured that there was an eye on safety and liability aspects of potential risk to workers and contractors. My question today is for the Minister of Transportation.

Yesterday I tabled a 2008 Queen’s University study, where the author clearly recommended more sampling be done further away from the roaster, due to the persistent arsenic trioxide in the soil environment at Giant.

Can the Minister indicate to the House, before yesterday, was this the first time he or his department has seen such report? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Minister of Transportation, Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can’t speak for whether the senior management at DOT has seen that report or not. I know that it wasn’t directly related to the bypass road, and I have not seen the report. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, the second report I tabled was an April 16, 2014, Giant Mine Working Group Public Report. On page 3, “Erika Nyyssonen (GNWT-ENR) noted that DOT, at the time, had been made aware of the Queens Soils results, and their vicinity to the highway realignment activities.”

Clearly, the department was aware of the province of arsenic in the area. So, can the Minister indicate to the House, why there was no baseline soil sampling for the potential of arsenic done by DOT before the construction of the Highway No. 4 bypass? Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I don’t know that there were no baseline studies done on the Highway No. 4. I’d have to get to the department to determine whether or not there was a baseline study done. I’m assuming that there was, and if there was some danger there to building the bypass road there, it would not have been built. Thank you.

I can answer that question for the Minister here because it was answered in that report on page 3. I quote, “Todd Slack (YKDFN) asked if there had been any sampling done before the new highway was constructed. Erika Nyyssonen (GNWT-ENR) said that DOT did not do any baseline sampling before the road went in.” So, Mr. Speaker, this is clear evidence that the

DOT failed to provide the necessary liability aspects for potential risk to workers and contractors.

Does the Minister know if there has been any baseline sampling done that he is aware of or the department has done during the construction life of the Highway No. 4 bypass? Thank you.

I’m not aware of any studies done.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Dolynny.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Here is the bill of goods. According to public documents, DOT clearly knew the potential for arsenic-rich hotspots with the Queen’s report for the Highway No. 4 bypass and yet they did not do any baseline sampling. Why? Who knows?

Can the Minister clearly articulate what real precautions took place with this road construction and what is this government’s liability to the arsenic exposure to these contractors? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As that road is still under construction, I will speak to the department and the work that they’ve done. They have done some work with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources when that road was being planned. I’m assuming the department, if advised by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, another department of the government, that it would be dangerous to build a road there, that the road would not have been built there, but I will check with the department and get back to the Member. Thank you.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to follow some of my colleagues today in talking about the cost of living. I’d like to start by asking the Premier about this new Energy Charrette that is being held. I’m not saying it’s a bad idea, but we had the first one that seemed to generate a fair amount of enthusiasm.

I would like to ask the Premier if he could articulate for us what we learned from the first Energy Charrette which actually resulted in some kind of a change in the direction that we were going or the way we do things that might have actually impacted the cost of living in the North because, in fact, energy is a huge part of that cost of living. Thank you.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Honourable Premier, Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We learned a lot from the first Energy Charrette. We had a very good discussion and the outcomes of that was the Energy Action Plan, where this government invested more resources into reducing our reliance on fossil fuels. We came up with a 20-year vision for power production and basically it looked at joining up the two hydro zones by building transmission lines and also looking to have inter-ties with the South so we could access cheaper power, and as demand grows, we can expand our hydro facilities. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

So it sounds like the first Energy Charrette, then, did produce some very positive results and some recommendations and some plans.

I would like to ask the Premier if we as a government are in a position financially to act on some of those long-range plans.

Has there already been action taken or is there some action to come that we can afford to undertake in the government? Thank you.

It was our government’s intention to look at finishing the costing of these transmission lines, and also, at the same time, we had approached the federal government to increase our borrowing limit by $1 billion.

Our costing has determined that the cost of building a transmission line to join the Taltson and Snare Hydro systems are prohibitive and it’s in the neighbourhood of almost 100 percent more than we had originally forecasted. In our view, those costs are too prohibitive to allow us to go ahead.

I think we feel with a second Energy Charrette we have to take a different approach whereby we make the consumers start to utilize more alternative and renewable forms of energy. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I would like to ask the Premier if the recent statistics on the low water and the impact that had on our hydro production has caused any shift in the plan that was developed as a result of the Energy Charrette. Obviously, we don’t know how long this is going to continue to be a problem, but it might have resulted in some kind of correction to our plans going forward given the outcome of this past year’s water levels and hydro interruptions. Thank you.

Certainly the low water and prohibitive cost estimates for building transmission lines, we don’t know if this low water will continue. This is a first time ever, the lowest in 65 years. Generally, the hydro reservoirs are filled with water every year with the runoff from the spring, or the freshet as they call it. The annual rainfall this year for the three months of May, June, July, I think we had a thimbleful of rain. So I don’t know if this will be continuing on an ongoing basis, but certainly it

made us recognize that we had to find a better way to reduce our reliance on hydro facilities in case it’s a permanent situation where going forward where the reservoirs won’t be refilled and we will have to look at alternatives where the consumers will have to become more independent and we will have to find a way to reduce our reliance on some of these facilities by having the Power Corporation buy excess power by individuals who generate their own power. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final, short supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It sounds, from what the Premier is saying, that the focus of the second Energy Charrette is going to be away from the infrastructure more to breaking it down to the consumer.

Is the make-up or the composition of the people who will be participating in the second Energy Charrette going to reflect that shift in focus? Thank you.

That is our intention, and we hope that through the people who we invite and all the participants that will in fact be the case. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.