Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, Mr. Miltenberger.

Mr. Speaker, I’ve been here as long as the Minister has been here in this House and the Minister could tell us right now how many days we have left in the 17th Assembly. I’m

sure he knows. I want to say I for one, as my colleague used to say, am sick and tired of talking about this while we spend money on chasing rabbit trails that go nowhere.

How many millions of dollars did we spend talking about the Taltson expansion, for the power purchase agreements for the mines, which went absolutely nowhere? I could have told you that was going to go nowhere. We were never going to build a transmission line across the East Arm of Great Slave Lake to the diamond mines. Then the study to whether we should build a transmission line to hook up the grid. All of these studies, reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, I mean, we could fill a library with all of the studies that we have done. Yet I want to say we need to leave a legacy of the 17th Assembly. Maybe it’s partly devolution, I don’t know what it is, but this Minister has been here a long time. I’d like to start doing some tangible things so that we can say that we made a difference and we just did not continue to spend millions of dollars thinking about it, looking at it, holding energy charrettes. Let’s do it.

Its 335 days, not counting the bill that’s going to be given assent to on Thursday. So it will be another six weeks added to that. We have the same goal. All this work is going to be predicated on the successful conclusion of the borrowing limit discussions with the federal government. The minute we know that number, then perhaps we can put a dollar figure out there that we seriously want to invest in making that kind of transformational shift that the Premier referred to in his comments yesterday. Thank you.

In this House I’ve spoken about this before and I would like the Minister to tell me again why we can’t, if we’re trying to reduce our carbon footprint, why can we not increase our use of biomass by putting pellet stoves or woodstoves in the homes of NWT residents that would significantly and immediately impact their cost of living if they chose to subscribe to this offer. We can do it. When John Todd was Minister of Finance he threw out $10,000 grants under the Downpayment Assistance Program like he was throwing out peanuts at a Sunday school picnic. I mean, it was broadcast. Anyway, that is something small, it is something tangible.

Will the Minister put out an RFP for a supplier of pellet woodstoves to start installing them in the homes of NWT residents? Thank you.

Thank you. Once again, I mean, the Member and I share the same intent. We have put millions into rebate and incentive programs to encourage people, to assist people to buy energy-efficient appliances, to switch to biomass and some of these programs are serious money, like tens of thousands of dollars for the commercial applications; for residents, there’s a fairly significant one. So if there’s a need to sweeten that pot to provide greater incentive, I think we would be prepared to look at that as we go forward and our fiscal situation becomes clear.

I wasn’t joking yesterday, as well, when I talked about if we did a wholesale change-out of all the incandescent, sodium vapour lights in the Northwest Territories, what would that save us in terms of energy costs? Those are very fundamental quick, immediate things that we can do. We’re switching streetlights right now, but those are the types of short-term, immediate impact things that I think we’d be in the position to discuss, once again, once the borrowing limit discussions are concluded.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. With all due respect, I do thank the Minister for that, but we spend tens of thousands on rebate programs for appliances. We’ve spent tens of millions trying to figure out what we’re going to do next. You know what? I might just add up the costs just to make my point, but I can’t do that right here right now.

I’d like to ask the Minister if we could not please find some money to do some more. He suggests switch out to all the LEDs. I’d like to switch out heating appliances or put dual heating systems in every home in the Northwest Territories where the homeowner or the occupant would like to subscribe to it. Could we please make that a priority legacy of this 17th Assembly?

When I talk about tens of thousands for the commercial application, for an individual application there is a significant five digit amount of money that is potentially available for a business wanting to change their appliances at a commercial level.

Once again, the issue that the Member raises is one that we can look at. The big issue we’re going to have is once our fiscal situation becomes clearer, then we can have a much more informed and meaningful discussion. Right now, we’ve just gone through the capital plan, we’ve just gone through and we’re working on finalizing the business plans for the upcoming O and M budget, and the Member knows that our fiscal circumstances are constrained and every cent we have is spoken for. We’ve taken a bit of a pillaring here in the Legislature about the fact that our $100 million cushion is actually only about $96 million. It’s a concern to us all, so we want to be very careful about any further expenditures until we know what our borrowing limit is going to be.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The time for oral questions has expired. Item 8, written questions. Item 9, returns to written questions. Item 10, replies to opening address. Item 11, petitions. Item 12, reports of standing and special committees. Item 13, reports of committees on the review of bills. Item 14, tabling of documents. Mr. Ramsay.