Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Next week we will be having the Energy Charrette. The charrette is meant to look at the cost of power and costs of energy in the Northwest Territories, probably one of the biggest costs that most of our constituents currently have. The government is touting this as the opportunity for us to look at all the solutions for the cost of living, but I’m very concerned.

We had an Energy Charrette a couple of years ago, with limited successes. We talked about a power supply system that would link all our grids together, which we know is now ineffective cost-wise, as well as the lack of our borrowing limit. The other issue such as gas prices is always on the constituents’ minds, and one of those factors is our gas taxes. Last week I was asking questions about the reduction of that tax. We should be looking at that type of stuff.

The other area a couple of the Members have talked about in studying taxation is northern residency limiting from the federal government. We know that this has not changed very much. We see in the south where they allow cross-border shopping to increase the volume so that the people down there can live cheaper. What have Northerners had for a tax increase from the federal government? Very little.

Obviously, in this Energy Charrette I hope we’re talking about conservation as well. We need to learn to do more with less. We need to figure out the way that our costs of living are high. A lot of the discussions lately have been about these small houses. What are we doing with them? What’s the potential for that? I have several constituents that are talking about trying to be off the grid as much as they can. We obviously know in the Hay River area there are a lot of people involved in agriculture, trying to replace foods that they’re purchasing currently at the grocery store and reducing those costs.

We need to work at this problem at several different angles.