Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wanted to applaud yesterday’s Oscar performance by the Finance Minister in attempting to answer questions about NTPC’s recent attempt to enter into an RFP franchise process in Hay River.

As I said yesterday, I respect the openness, fairness and transparency of the RFP process. However, what I don’t respect is when the process is flawed and riddled with a hidden Cabinet agenda that has secretly changed our energy policy without the public’s oversight.

Now, every resident in the NWT wants cheaper power. This is a given. However, the way this

government is trying to sell you this spin is not only missing key ingredients such as facts, its leaders are paving the way with a ticker tape parade that suggests they have the real solution.

The McLeod government’s new secret energy policy is designed to convince you they have the answers to our energy costs. That by a singular design they can rid the oversight of the Public Utilities Board and eventually, township by township, through RFP process, expropriate a privately owned Aboriginal company.

So, in fairness, let’s test their not-so-secret winning NTPC formula and let’s evaluate it for efficiency and for the return on investment, as they said, for their 42,000 NWT shareholders.

So, for accuracy, let’s visit the public accounts from 2004 to 2015. The first question: Can the NTPC stand on its own two feet and at least break even for the taxpayer? The simple answer is no. In fact, when we add up all the subsidies, all the contributions to NTPC, NT Hydro and NT Energy, plus calculate the dividends taxpayers did not receive from 2010 onwards and factor in the bad debt, the write-off at over $2 million, are you are left with a grand total of $104,482,910. This figure of almost $105 million is what it cost our shareholders, our people, out of their pockets, to run their Crown corporation jewel from 2004 to 2015. I must add, not once did our power rates go down.

Real power savings for our residents require real solutions. But moreover, reducing our cost of living starts with partnerships, not secret agendas and definitely not misspending $105 million of our tax dollars. Thank you.