Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the Member’s comments. In regards to the issue of lack of community energy projects, I think there’s a number that have been put in, either in the community or through NTPC, if I could refer to Colville Lake, for example, or Lutselk’e, where we’ve got power purchase agreements. We spent hundreds of thousands of dollars taking a look at Deline. We’ve got biomass, albeit in our own buildings for the most part.
We’ve promoted and are
helping build an industry now.
I appreciate there’s a need to do more. We have an expression of interest coming out, for example, for one megawatt, five megawatt, 10 megawatts of wind and/or solar in Yellowknife in the Snare system to see what the marketplace is telling us. So, I appreciate that the Member would like us to do more, and we are going to come forward. There are some big ticket items that we’re going to have to manage. For example, putting in wind up between Inuvik and Tuk, which would probably be in the $50 million range to do nine megawatts of power could have a dramatic impact on diesel consumption.
So, it’s not
that there’s a shortage of projects, it’s more of a shortage of adequate resources to do them all.
The issue of the roads, I would suggest that if you had the Wrigley to Norman Wells portion of the road built, that would be a single great decreaser of the cost of living up in the Sahtu. That type of connection is critical, I think. We have the same kind of challenge going through the Tlicho and then the road into the mines that would help prolong the mine life and add considerably to the continued economic good fortune when it comes to the diamond mines. So we would have to manage those as well.
There’s a briefing on Stanton tonight at the rise of the House.
But clearly, it’s a $350 million project that’s
going to proceed.
It’s going to get a new hospital. It’s
all good news. There’s going to be increased services. It’s going to demonstrate to you that it’s going to come in on budget
and on time the way it’s
structured.
So, we’ll spend the time that committee
needs on that tonight.
The issue of child care, daycare, those types of things, that is a discussion to be had again.
There’s
no money in the budget. The agreement, when we did the capital plan, was to make it as status quo as possible, recognizing that this is a very unique circumstance for the first time where the outgoing Assembly is doing the capital plan for the incoming Assembly for the first year, just because of the late date of the election and the need to make sure we don’t lose the building season. So, we’ve done our best to honour that direction, to keep it as status quo as possible.
The college campus, I agree, has been on the books for a long time. One of the discussions that has already come up is with the old Stanton Hospital, what’s going to be the use for that, and we have to look at all options and that’s a building that’s still going to have some life left to it. One of the considerations may be that Yellowknife college campus is a potential.
The new school for Detah, we’ll make note of that and I appreciate, and I haven’t been there for a while but I have been to the school, it has seen better years. I appreciate the comments on Sissons and the comments on schools in Nahendeh. Thank you.