I’m certainly looking and being very optimistic as to the solar project in Colville Lake. People up there are looking forward to seeing the benefits. It could certainly reduce the cost of their consumption. There is a lot of money spent on energy, especially with their small co-op store that has a huge power bill every month. We’re certainly looking forward to that project and hopefully that will be duplicated in the other communities.

That’s the goal. Really, it’s the goal for the homeowner either living in public housing or their own private housing is to get a cheap power bill. A lot of complaints from my communities is the amount of money that we spend on good, reliable energy. We want that. When we flick our light, we want to make sure it goes on and stays on. That’s what we pay, the cost, and that’s where I’m wanting to use some of my comments here is to look at ways that we could have ultimately clean energy.

Hydro is one of the cheapest and cleanest energy other than natural gas or things like that. But we have a lot of natural gas in our area. The Norman Wells oilfield burns off a lot of natural gas every day. That flare stack is going off a lot, steady and constant since the ‘30s. I guess that’s my point, is that can we tap into the natural gas and to look at those other customers. If not, have we looked enough with the hydro in Deline? Have we explored it aggressively and persistently to see if this is a possibility with the money that we have?

Certainly, the Minister is correct. You and I and other Members had this discussion on the old becoming new. Going out there and harvesting wood for ourselves and making sure that people in the communities through no matter what can have a wood burning option, a wood stove, a good wood stove, and cut wood, that would certainly cut down a lot of other issues. Do we have that type of incentive so if people want to get out and say yes, I’ll cut a cord of wood? There’s an incentive to go out there to get the wood and to burn it and decrease their use of diesel fuel, because the fuel that we get is coming from outside the Territories, sometimes even outside of Canada, while at the same time we’re sitting on huge reservoirs of oil and gas and we’re not doing too much about it. That’s crazy thinking, I think. Why not use our own resources? Let’s look at that. Let’s not be scared of it and fear, fear itself. Let’s see what we can do for ourselves.

That’s where I want to end, with these energy types of discussions. Let’s start looking at our own resources and not be dependent on foreign oil or foreign gas here.