Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member has shown himself to be a very vocal and aggressive defender and supporter of powerful money, multinational interests headquartering outside of the Northwest Territories and clearly today he’s going to vent his spleen on the Power Corporation, which is, I think, a very good corporation that we’d all be lost without.
On the issue of dividends, let’s make the distinction between the Power Corporation and a private company. The people of the Northwest Territories own the Power Corporation. There’s one shareholder. Rather than take a dividend, we reinvest all the money back into the system in the Northwest Territories to make sure we provide services. Over time we have had a relationship with the Power Corporation that has become closer because there has been significant things that have happened that if we did not have that relationship, would have led to very, very significant increases in the rates. Let me specifically talk about the money we put in the life of this government to cushion the shock of the increases due to diesel costs. Let me talk about the $20 million we put into low water that would have had to have been covered by anybody providing that service.
So, that relationship has become very close. The Auditor General has pointed out that that relationship has been close and that we should look at how we should change our reporting relationship because of that close working relationship. The Power Corporation is the main vehicle for energy policy for the Government of the Northwest Territories and, in many cases, social policy in the Northwest Territories. When we work to do alternative energy, when we work to minimize our greenhouse gas emissions, when we look at LED lights across the Northwest Territories, when we look at converting Colville Lake to solar with
batteries to cut our diesel and our greenhouse gases, when we look at the solar in Fort Simpson. Those type of things, they’re a part of the government’s policy, energy policy, carried out on our behalf by the corporation that we own as a collective.
So, those are some of the musings and the Auditor General has flagged them for us, as well, in a very practical reality in terms of how do we account for the money that the Power Corp spends in a relationship with the territorial government.