Thank you, Mr. Speaker. If one was to evaluate our current state of affairs when it comes to our energy production, our over 26 percent in power rate increases over the life of this Assembly and our continued lack of a plan, some would say we are on a constant morphine drip, and they would be right. Furthermore, as a main shareholder in what is in essence a Crown corporation, the NWT Power Corporation has shown its lack of accountability, and instead of being held to task as a corporation would in the real world, we lavish it with subsidy rewards.

History has shown time and time again the GNWT has a history of failure when it comes to energy planning and rising costs in its production. How many more reviews, strategies, collaborations, reports, papers, action plans, panels and advisory groups does it take to get from A to B in lowering costs and ultimately reducing our cost of living?

As the North gravitates to what is yet another Energy Charrette – the second one in less than two years – I, like most Northerners, wonder at what point will this new initiative gather the same dusty fate as its predecessor.

As optimistic as one can be as an MLA who sees this from a unique perspective, I have a very difficult time understanding why we would be using such a delay tactic of a charrette to mitigate what we already know.

Aside from the obvious of needing to instill the proper business mentality at the NWT Power Corporation, the GNWT needs to simply undertake what I call two strategic directions.

If you truly want to lower the cost of living with energy solutions, the GNWT needs to first lower our thirst for fuel. As mentioned in last week’s Member’s statement, we need to recapture at NTPC production sites, unused stovepipe heat energy and store it in earth tubes through what is called ground-coupled heat exchange system. This will immediately lower our diesel consumption in all our non-hydro communities and our return on investment would be almost immediate.

The second strategy investment is simply through incentives. We need to provide as many incentives as possible to let the industry, with all its latest technology, moving at lightning speed, do its thing. This will lower the capitalization of investment from 15 to 20 years to a more reasonable five years or less, thereby making energy investment more economically viable to the consumer.

I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.

---Unanimous consent granted