This is page numbers 5143 – 5178 of the Hansard for the 17th Assembly, 5th Session. The original version can be accessed on the Legislative Assembly's website or by contacting the Legislative Assembly Library. The word of the day was energy.

Topics

Recognition of Visitors in the Gallery
Recognition of Visitors in the Gallery

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Welcome everybody here in the public gallery today. Thank you for taking an interest in our proceedings.

Item 6, acknowledgements. Mr. Bromley.

Bob Bromley

Bob Bromley Weledeh

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I rise to acknowledge Mary Rose Sundberg and Rose Mackenzie. At a fall community feast at the Chief Drygeese Centre in Detah, in celebration of the Literacy Council’s Peter Gzowski Literacy Invitational, two Weledeh constituents and Yellowknives Dene members were recognized for their achievements.

Rose Mackenzie, who is a second-year Aurora College Ndilo Community Learning Centre student, was honoured with the Literacy Learner Award for her determined and successful efforts towards self-improvement as an adult learner. Particularly, Rose has excelled in mathematics, where she has moved through six grade levels in a year.

Mary Rose Sundberg, the founder and executive director of the Goyatiko Language Society in Detah, received the prestigious Gzowski Award, given to a person who shares the journalist’s spirit as a proponent for literacy.

Mr. Speaker, colleagues, please join me in recognizing the accomplishments of these constituents and their awards for outstanding achievement in their pursuit of literacy. Mahsi.

---Applause

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Item 7, oral questions. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Jane Groenewegen

Jane Groenewegen Hay River South

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement today, I talked about the possible advantages of doing more about conservation when it comes to energy and I was speaking particularly about our high cost of power. My questions today are for the Minister responsible for the NWT Power Corporation.

I don’t know if I should have been in marketing, but I thought of a few campaign titles if we were to actually launch a campaign to encourage people to reduce their consumption of energy. I mentioned Ghostbusters. How about The Lights Are on But Nobody’s Home? I came up with a few others here too. I was just sitting here thinking about this.

I’d like to ask the Minister, what has his department, or his role as Minister responsible for the Power Corporation, what kind of research has gone into the advantages of a promotion or a campaign to encourage consumers to reduce the consumption of power? Thank you.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The Minister responsible for the Northwest Territories Power Corporation, Mr. Miltenberger.

Michael Miltenberger

Michael Miltenberger Thebacha

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The underlying concern, of course, in some quarters, is that the Power Corporation has no interest in encouraging people to reduce and conserve because they are profit driven and they have to survive on their revenues. In fact, if that was the case, it no longer is. As we will see over the course of the next few days, there is going to be discussion about the Power Corporation, our Crown corporation of which we are the one shareholder, of how it can better be a vehicle for the energy policy of the Government of the Northwest Territories and the people of the Northwest Territories.

They are committed to conservation. They’re switching out simple things. Like, they’re switching out all their sodium vapour streetlights to LED streetlights. They’re going to be rolling out a very significant conservation program online here in the next few days. They’ll work with communities and homeowners to look at what things they can do to conserve energy. We have a common shared commitment on that, and we are going to work on that together here as we move forward.

Jane Groenewegen

Jane Groenewegen Hay River South

That could be the title of another couple of campaigns: Urban Legends and Something About Myths.

Back to my question, what has this government done to launch any kind of a campaign directly targeted at consumers to encourage them? He’s named some things that the Power Corporation is doing, but what has this government done directly targeted at consumers to encourage them to reduce their consumption?

Michael Miltenberger

Michael Miltenberger Thebacha

At the beginning of the 16th Assembly, we came forward and we put $60 million, as a government, into the development of an approach to energy savings, energy efficiency. We rolled out the biomass plan, the solar plan, a strategy that has guided us. We have spent millions converting to biomass in our own facilities. We have put millions of dollars into Environment and Natural Resources as well as the Arctic Energy Alliance to help people, to give them rebates for switching over to energy-efficient appliances, to switch to biomass, conversion with LED lights, we’ve picked up our work we’ve done on recycling, all of which are energy savers in the long run, in addition to the work we’re doing with the Power Corporation. We’ve mapped out, through our Energy Plan, a lot of these activities that we’ve continued to invest significant amounts of money into.

Jane Groenewegen

Jane Groenewegen Hay River South

Minister Miltenberger made a brief reference to this theory or concept or myth that’s out there in the public that if it costs this much to generate, distribute and retail power in the Northwest Territories, that if we actually reduce our consumption, the unit price is not going to be changed, because they still need to receive a return on their investment. I’d like the Minister to speak to that issue. People are saying, well, if we use less , the unit price will go up and we’re not really going to accomplish anything.

Could the Minister please elaborate on this to dispel that myth?

Michael Miltenberger

Michael Miltenberger Thebacha

I can talk to the Power Corporation. I can’t speak to the NUL, which, as well, is a distributor. I know we work hard to keep the price of energy as low as we can. As we move forward, as I’ve pointed out publicly, we’ve subsidized the Power Corporation over the last three years directly over $50 million to soften the blow and protect rates because of the increasing diesel costs, the fact that we haven’t raised diesel prices for five years to help offset the low water here in the Snare system. We have moved past the point of where it’s strictly a for-profit, you have to live off your revenues, you have to generate a dividend, to recognizing that as we have moved to a two-rate zone, and actually, we have started actually moving to more of a one-rate zone, we, as a government, have put in more and more money and our relationship with the Power Corporation is now very, very close. It’s not really an arm’s-length corporation. It’s much more consistent with the relationship we have similar to the Power Corporation, and as we move forward into the future that kind of relationship is going to continue.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

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

Jane Groenewegen

Jane Groenewegen Hay River South

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don’t doubt or deny that our government has spent millions to try and protect consumers from the rates, but I think we need a campaign directed at the consumers at a household level to get them to do their part in tandem with the government’s efforts to try and reduce their consumption.

Has that kind of a program ever been researched, and could there be projections done to see what kind of gains we could achieve from that? Thank you.

Michael Miltenberger

Michael Miltenberger Thebacha

As we move forward on renewables like solar, that we have in place, after some considerable debate over the years, a Net Metering Program which encourages and doesn’t penalize folks for putting in solar in their own buildings. We have removed the cap, we have removed the standby charges. As we look at the charrette, we are going to be asking people for further ways that we can encourage people to look at generating distributed energy that they can generate and that we will buy back through a net metering process. There are those kinds of opportunities that currently exist and are going to continue to exist.

As we gather all these very, very interested and dedicated people around the tables here over the next few days, I’m sure we’re going to find out other things that people recommend that we can do. For example, should we, as a territory, as a government, should we subsidize the wholesale change out of every light bulb in the Northwest Territories to be an LED light within the year? Should we do those types of things?

What other things, in terms of conservation, should we do? We have beefed up our energy standards requirements, both in our own construction and what we encourage people to do when they build in the Northwest Territories. We’re working with industry to set up our first only pellet plant in the Northwest Territories. We spent years building the market, now we are building the industry. That’s going to give us a northern energy source that we believe will be cheaper and we know will save us 30 to 40 percent over the cost of diesel.

So, we are doing an enormous number of things and we are going to continue to do that. We are going to publically say, again, that we are prepared to invest tens upon tens of millions of dollars to help make this transition away from diesel into the more sustainable renewable. Thank you.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.

Norman Yakeleya

Norman Yakeleya Sahtu

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Like the old saying goes, the gas goes in your car, not on your hands. Well, customers and trappers in the Sahtu cannot afford any more spillage at the pumps. They are getting gouged. My question is for Minister Beaulieu today.

Can the Minister tell this House why hunters and trappers, customers in Fort Good Hope, got a trick at the pumps last week instead of a treat? Someone needs to say more than I’m sorry.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister of Public Works, Mr. Beaulieu.

Tom Beaulieu

Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The cost of gasoline or diesel motives or heating oil is all based on the purchase costs, the transportation, the commission that it costs us to deliver from our tanks to the homes or the cost of administering what they have there, which we refer to as operations and maintenance as well. Also, we keep track of the product evaporation and taxes. That’s it; there’s no profit on any of the fuels that we sell. Thank you.

Norman Yakeleya

Norman Yakeleya Sahtu

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the Minister for sharing some of the information and the costs sheets with me. You know there is a gas war happening in Edmonton. It’s $1 per litre.

Would the Minister entertain giving customers, hunters and trappers in the communities like Fort Good Hope, a six-month grace period by selling fuel at the former rate of $1.80? Would he do that?

Tom Beaulieu

Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe

Mr. Speaker, the department, through the petroleum products division, has no ability to subsidize fuel. What we do have is the ability to stabilize the cost, so we have a Stabilization Fund that we use so that there are not sharp fluctuations in the costs. We use that fund to ensure that there isn’t a sharp increase at inappropriate times and so on. This fund, the Petroleum Fund, does not give us the ability to subsidize or we would run out and we would have to change the revolving fund. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Norman Yakeleya

Norman Yakeleya Sahtu

Mr. Speaker, a promise is a promise is a promise. In Fort Good Hope they were promised that they’d be paying less for the fuel. We haven’t yet advanced far enough in our technology with the hunters and trappers to have little squirrels or animals operate our machines. We still rely on gas, and gas is what keeps our lives stable in Fort Good Hope.

I want to task the Minister again, using the Stabilization Fund, can that be used in our communities like Fort Good Hope? The hunters and trappers were told by the government that they will pay less for fuel. Can you give them a grace period, other than to let me know how the system works? That’s what they’re looking for. That’s something that this government could look at doing, to say I’m sorry, we made an oopsie.

Tom Beaulieu

Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe

The Stabilization Fund is there to stabilize the cost of fuel, that is correct; however, it is not there to provide subsidies. What the Member is asking for is for us to take a look at stabilizing at last year’s rate for an indefinite period of time, or six months, then what we would have to do is we would have to recover that cost at some point from somewhere. So, the only place where we have the ability to reduce the cost below the 100 percent is in Colville and Tsiigehtchic. Aside from that, other communities are too big, that once we start to provide any sort of percentage subsidy, it would cost us money and then we would see a reduction in our revolving fund. Thank you.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

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

Norman Yakeleya

Norman Yakeleya Sahtu

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to hold this government to account. In the CBC report this month, the government said people in Fort Good Hope would pay less to fill up their vehicles. Someone told the community of Fort Good Hope they would pay less to fill up their vehicles in the community.

Who said that? Which department? Which staff? If that’s not true, then they’ve got to be held accountable, and that’s what I’m saying. Can you say, I’m sorry, this is what we’ll do for this mistake?

It takes a real government to own up to that responsibility and that’s what I’m asking this government, in its goodness of the Stabilization Fund, to give them a grace period. Our fault, we’ll own up to it, we’ll bite the bullet. Because you know what? We just approved a $40 million project for the North, so we do have the money. Stop pretending we don’t have the money; the money is there. Let’s help the people in Fort Good Hope. Let this government be responsible and big enough to say, yes, we made this mistake and we’ll fix it and not goobley gobbling all over the answers. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Tom Beaulieu

Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe

The Member is correct that the wrong information and the wrong place was given out, and that was corrected. We had advised the community that that had occurred and we then issued the correct price to the community. However, again, it’s a fairly simple process that we have no ability to subsidize. Like I said to the Member, we do have an ability to stabilize the fund and that’s what we do, we try to stabilize the fund so that the constituents are not seeing sharp costs in fuel fluctuations in the cost of gasoline. So, I will check into exactly what had occurred, what type of information had been given to Fort Good Hope and I can let them know what we can do to resolve that error. Thank you.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Member for Inuvik Boot Lake. Mr. Moses.