Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Does the Minister have an estimated dollar figure as to what the possibilities are the federal government is looking at? I say this because at one time the federal government said, looking at the Canol and funding, it is almost close to what it costs to clean up that we’re still cleaning up the Giant arsenic mine here, and that’s the equivalency of cleaning up the Canol Heritage Trail, and that’s just on a hiking-type of discussion I had with the federal government representative.

Can the Minister tell me if he has any type of numbers?

The Member probably knows the area better than anybody, having spent as much time up there as he has. He would also know that there is an infrastructure there. Sometimes the only way to get in there is to hike in or to take a helicopter. The cost of remediating and cleaning up, you know, what are remote sites, is going to be very, very expensive. I wouldn’t want to hazard a guess today on what that would cost, but it will be a tremendous figure to clean and remediate the old Canol Trail.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The Minister responsible for the Power Corporation, Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There are cost of living issues here. There are decisions being made in a community that’s interested in lowering those costs of living challenges, and it’s an issue for the territorial government. The Power Corporation is a vehicle for all people in the Northwest Territories, a Crown corporation with 42,000 shareholders. That’s the underlying impetus here. Thank you.

I will let that stand for itself. Government has decided to support communities in opening their franchises for power delivery and distribution, suggesting that there is money to be saved, as the Minister just said, and that the cost of living will be lowered significantly through competition. The cost of power generation is as significant, or more significant even, than distribution.

Is the Minister now also prepared to give communities the discretion to open power generation to competition in order to fully address power costs for both our consumers, the environment and our communities? Mahsi.

We already have the practice of entertaining power purchase agreements and buying power from folks who are generating it. For example, the people of Lutselk’e.

There wasn’t an answer there, but I do congratulate Lutselk’e by taking the bull by the horns and finessing a power purchase agreement, a rare animal indeed, from the Power Corporation.

Cabinet has severely restricted the power of the supposedly arm’s-length Public Utilities Board to protect the public by restricting their ability to adjust power rates by more than 1 percent per year. This change means correction to the 30 percent excess NTPC charges South Slave Power was assessed in 2008, the last time they did a cost of power study, could take decades.

As the government has arbitrarily taken this regulatory power away from the PUB, are they

similarly prepared to arbitrarily roll back this unfair windfall for the Power Corporation at the expense of power consumers in the South Slave? Mahsi.

Nothing has been arbitrarily taken away and we provide a role, as government, in an orderly measured way when we think it’s required to make sure that the system that we have before us functions to the best efficiency possible.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bromley.

I will take that as a no, they won’t protect the people of the South Slave from that excess power charge.

This government seems willing to make decisions in a policy vacuum and without input, any input, an iota of input from Regular Members or Aboriginally owned communities, companies and consumers or communities, for that matter. As a Regular Member, I am acutely aware of the lack of such a policy and am uncomfortable, to say the least, to leaving such decisions to Cabinet’s most recent whims.

My question is: When can we expect a rigorous, comprehensive and collaborative process to develop the umbrella energy policy on which to base the decisions, transparent decisions, that so greatly affect our communities, our cost of living, which the Power Corporation has never addressed, and our environment? Mahsi.

I would suggest that for the last eight years now, we’ve been hard at work with our evolving energy strategy, from the time we put $60 million in our last government to a serious investment, $60 million towards alternative energy that we’ve come up with an energy plan. We’ve had energy charrettes that have helped structure and focus that energy plan. We’ve had another energy charrette last November and there is going to be a response tabled in the House this week. We have a power system plan from NTPC power as it was looking at infrastructure for the transmission line expansion to see if that was a viable option. We have a Biomass Strategy, a Solar Strategy, all of which have involved MLAs, have involved committees with regular briefings. So, the Member is erroneous in his assertions. Thank you.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I have questions for the Minister of Human Resources with regard to how we hire our summer students. Every year we get summer students who come up from post-secondary school, whether it’s

in Alberta, BC, Yukon, even here in the Northwest Territories, Aurora College.

My first question is: How many government summer jobs are filled with post-secondary students? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Moses. Minister of Human Resources, Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As of May 28th , we had hired 249 that have signed

offers, 242 of those people are either finishing first year, second year, third year or in the fourth or fifth year. Seven of the 249 students will be starting university this fall. Thank you.

When putting out these jobs for competition with the students, has the Minister been working with the other departments or even with his department and looked at doing a coordinated start date for all post-secondary students so it creates an equal opportunity for all students who come back up to the North and for northern students, as well, to have the equal opportunity of applying on these jobs?

As we know, some schools, some colleges, some universities let their students out sooner than others. Obviously, those ones who are let out sooner have a greater advantage of putting their resumes out and possibly securing jobs while others are still in studies.

Has the Minister looked at creating a coordinated start date for all post-secondary students so that everyone gets an equal opportunity for these jobs? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The government starts accepting applications from university students, post-secondary students, any time after December 1st . We run the application phase right up until

August 15th , when some of the students are not

starting back immediately at the beginning of September. So, we try to coordinate it so the first group who usually finishes university for the year, end of April, we hire a few of the students, a majority of the students then, and we realize there are more students finishing at the end of May and at the end of June. We try to coordinate it so those students are given opportunities as well. Thank you.

I think the Minister mentioned earlier that there were about 19 pending applications out there, job offers. I don’t know what process they are in with these offers.

It’s June 1st already, so I know some students

would have gotten out of school at the end of April or even mid-April. We’ve still got some job pending offers here. As I mentioned, we still have Grade 12 students who are still taking studies, so they aren’t going to have the equal opportunity to get some of these government jobs.

What is the Minister doing to speed up the process so some of these jobs get filled a lot faster, giving our post-secondary students more time in the job so they can save their money for when they go back to school in the fall? What is the department doing to speed up that process to ensure our post-secondary students get into the jobs a lot sooner? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Last year we hired 212 students at the GNWT. This year, as I indicated, we have 268 students working, plus pending. So, if you compare it to last year, we are slightly ahead of the number at this point than we were last year.

What we’re doing is we are marketing ourselves in several ways. We have the e-mail messenger that goes out. We have a website. We looked at the human resources centres. We advertise in band offices. We talk to government services officers – we have 19 government service officers – and they are also involved. We have newspaper advertisements, et cetera, as an attempt to try to bring the students in as quickly as possible. So, we are fairly happy with the pace at which the students are coming in. We anticipate that we’ll be at least around the number that we were last year, or maybe a little bit better than that.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Within our public service system there are jobs that we have that are hard to fill, and I know at that meeting with Aurora College last week we talked about how do we look at creating programs for those hard-to-fill jobs. We talked about mentorship for our post-secondary students.

What is the Minister doing to address our mentorship problems when we have jobs that are hard to fill? If we have jobs that are hard to fill and we have a student that is trying to get into that program, what is he doing to accommodate those students to practice what they’re going to school for? Should we not have somebody in a position to mentor them?

We have been reviewing our vacancies and we have what we consider hard-to-fill positions of around 60 to 65 positions in the GNWT. Although not specifically targeted to those actual jobs, we do have some internship programs the government provides to the various departments, depending on the size of the department, a certain amount of money to get interns, and we provide enough money to have 32 interns in the GNWT. We usually end up filling all of those jobs. We also have a Progressive Experience Program within the student hires. We have 80 of those positions and currently we have 69 of them filled. The Department of Health and Social Services has the relevant experience programs for students and they have 24 of those positions in the

department and currently they have 15 of those positions filled.