Masi. Minister of Environment and Natural Resources.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in one of our Cabinet meetings that we had this morning, we had a briefing on the action plan, and that is going to be brought to Cabinet for approval.

What we will do is we are going to give that action plan to the Regular Members. We are also going to release it to the Indigenous governments to review. We will be sharing it with Canada and our other partners to review the draft action plan, and there will also be a public review going on concurrently with the organizations that I just mentioned that we are going to give the plan to. Committee will have an opportunity to see that action plan before it goes any further. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you to the Minister for the reply. It is very positive news to hear that, in order to take the next steps, the Minister and Cabinet, in fact, are going to engage extensively with various stakeholders and especially with Members across the floor here.

I would also like to ask the Minister: given that the strategic framework includes a major goal of reducing GHGs to 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030, Mr. Speaker, can the Minister advise what range of actions could be considered to lead to this reduction? I don't need specifics, but general would be great.

There are a number of initiatives that we are hoping to see go through to help us with our greenhouse gas emissions. Obviously, you have heard talk of Taltson quite a bit in this House, and the announcement that the Federal Minister and Minister Schumann made this morning also indicated that there was going to be some increased funding for the Arctic Energy Alliance, because our understanding is that their funding is getting fully subscribed to and maxed out very quickly. All that money is used to switch homeowners and members of the public to renewable resource type heating, and that, in turn, will help with the greenhouse gas emissions.

There are a number of initiatives that the government is working on and the people of the Northwest Territories should be working on to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by the target that the Member has pointed out.

Thank you to the Minister for his reply. The Minister has noted there was an announcement today with regard to $23 million coming from the federal government to help a number of our programs, and that is very welcome funding.

The Minister also mentioned in his comments about Taltson, and so maybe I will ask him: hydro power, specifically the Taltson project, has the potential to replace significant amounts of diesel to power communities and industries. Can the Minister maybe update the progress on the Taltson discussions or the Taltson business plan for Members and for residents?

My understanding is that we are still having discussions with the federal government on Taltson, though my understanding, again, is that they are fairly receptive to our initiative, because it does fit in within their mandate as well.

I failed to point out before some of the other projects that we are working on, such as variable speed generators in some of the communities. In the one community, I think we are almost coming up to a year where we are going to do an evaluation of the effect that it has had on the amount of fuel that they used. We are looking forward to that data.

There are a number of other projects, again, that we are talking about, but the Taltson one, in particular, I know that the federal government is listening to our officials and our Minister, because it does fit within their mandate. If that were to somehow go through, that would help us a great deal in reducing our greenhouse gas emissions and providing clean energy to folks in the southern part of the Northwest Territories.

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife North.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and we certainly look forward to hearing more detailed information about Taltson as we move forward, with regard to that business plan. Mr. Speaker, we know that transportation is obviously a critical piece to the North. It lowers the cost of living whenever we invest in that kind of infrastructure. We are building more roads, but roads are also going to naturally promote more vehicle and truck transportation.

One of the strategy's objectives is to reduce emissions from transportation by 10 per cent. Can the Minister maybe give us some specifics about how this might be achieved? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am glad that the Member mentioned roads, because when you have roads, if you have very good quality roads like they enjoy in the southern part of the Northwest Territories, then that obviously helps with the cost of operating your vehicle.

Other things that we are doing is supporting community-based initiatives, such as active transport, public transportation; leading by example in implementing fleet management for vehicles and heavy equipment; the marine fleet piloted a grant program for hybrid plug-in electric gasoline vehicles and charging stations in hydro communities in the southern part of the Northwest Territories; and supporting the installation of auxiliary heaters in fleet vehicles and heavy-duty vehicles to reduce idling. There are a number of small projects that we work on to try and get the 10 per cent on the transportation side.

If anybody knows climate change, it is the Northwest Territories. We have been dealing with the effects of climate change long before the rest of the country, and I would even say the rest of the world, because we have been working a lot in the past in trying to mitigate some of the effects of the warming temperatures that we have seen in the Northwest Territories.

We are pleased that the federal government is now actually coming to the table, and they are starting to provide a lot of funding for many of the initiatives. It is a good partnership that we have formed with them, and we look forward to more work with them in helping to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Mackenzie Delta.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in follow-up to my Member's statement earlier today, I have a few questions for the Minister of Infrastructure.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the Minister: how has the department advanced the Willow River Bridge Project since February? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Masi. Minister of Infrastructure.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As far as advancing that project, that is a community initiative. We are working with the community of Aklavik and the Member across to help them move this project along, but what I can do is update the House. We were just at the Economic Summit in Inuvik, the Premier and myself had an opportunity to sit down with the mayor of Aklavik and have a conversation about a working group that he is pulling together, because this thing has sort of been all over the map, with different funding groups taking the money and having different priorities on how this bridge should be advanced, so he is pulling that together, and we have had the regional director sit in on that meeting to help them, help facilitate how they think they need to pull some stuff together around the land use permits and moving this thing forward. That was the latest that we had with the mayor of Aklavik at this point. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Minister touched on this a bit, but the community has formed a project-specific working group. This group plans to hire a dedicated project coordinator. How will the Minister and his department work with this coordinator to advance our shared goals for the Willow River Bridge project?

As I said, when the Premier and I had a chance to meet with the mayor, we asked Mr. Clarkson, the regional director, to sit in on all meetings and keep us apprised of discussions.

Will the Minister communicate with the Minister of MACA to see what federal funding we can access to get this bridge in place?

Yes, I will make sure that I follow up with the Minister of MACA. In particular, there are a different bunch of funding streams that are possible funding for the community to maybe access through the MACA portion of the infrastructure investment that we got from Canada. There are some different application-based programs, I think, that might be available. Like I said, we'll have Mr. Clarkson sit down with the community, because there are a lot of local things I think that we need to work out to move this project forward, but at the same time, we'll look at federal opportunities.

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Mackenzie Delta.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, once we get this bridge in place, we'll need to turn our attention to the construction of an all-weather road. Has the department worked these needs into its planning? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

If I remember correctly, through our 25-year action plan for transportation, I do not believe that this has been identified as a priority going forward. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.

Marsi cho, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have questions for the Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation. Mr. Speaker, I'd like to ask the Minister questions on the upcoming needs survey that was, I think, promised to us in the House some time back. I'd like to ask the Minister: when will the corporation be starting their needs survey on the housing needs? Thank you.

Masi. Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can tell the Member that we have been doing a lot of work in housing. Since the 17^th Assembly, a lot of work has been done around policy. We've already had another survey that was done looking at our core need progress. We have a seniors' study going out right now that we are hoping to get done by the end of this calendar year that will help us look at work that we're going to be doing in the next fiscal year. We are also going through a strategic renewal.

So a lot of work has actually been done based on the previous needs survey that was completed, and based on that survey, we're going to be introducing a lot of our programs and services throughout all communities across the Northwest Territories. Then, if we do need to go out and do another core needs survey, we will do that, but we actually are also building a lot of strong relationships with some of our Indigenous groups and our stakeholders and I look forward to continuing to do that work.

One thing that came out of the past survey, as well, was the community housing plans, and that's going to really give us an idea of what is needed in the communities; whether it's homelessness, whether it's seniors, whether it's singles, families. I think we're going to have a really good opportunity. When those community housing plans do come out, that is going to give us an idea of the work that needs to be done throughout the NWT. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.