Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Hydro Strategy is one that encompasses the whole of the Northwest Territories. The Taltson is a piece of it, Bluefish and others. We’re looking at new areas of development. NT Hydro is working on their portion. We’ve been funding this work through the Ministerial Energy Coordinating Committee. NT Hydro, for its part, is working in partnership, for example, with the Yellowknives Dene First Nation to evaluate the hydro potential at Beaulieu River, and initial reporting we’re hoping will be completed this spring.

We’ve also hired a firm to help with the land corporations and municipal governments in Norman Wells, Fort Good Hope and Tulita to engage in gathering traditional knowledge on sites of hydro potential. As well, there will be some work done on the Willow or Brackett River near the community of Tulita. Recently it was done there. They’re screening a report there.

Looking at, as well, working with the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment and the work around, for example, the Sahtu land use plan, dealing with some of the hydro concerns or issues there. As well as looking at the multi-year fisheries, environmental and traditional knowledge study of the Great Bear River. As well as dealing with the feasibility of the Fort Liard geothermal, and of course, on the Mackenzie River with the Run-of-the-River Program that we started there last year and continuing this summer. We’re pulling that information together in the hopes that we will be able to have a renewed Hydro Strategy to be able to bring forward. I don’t have a timeline on that, though, as of yet. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It is an honour to introduce in our gallery Premier for the day, Ms. Erin Nadli, who has come to watch our session and been involved in a number of things today, accompanied by her mother, Paschalina Nadli, and her aunt Edith Squirrel, and also accompanied by our intern at our press office, Victoria.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In July 2009 the Northern Leaders’ Forum was created as a means for all leaders in our territory to work collectively to advance the interests of our territory and its residents. As a foundation, we set out the task of developing a common vision and roadmap for the future of the NWT.

In varying ways, members of the Northern Leaders’ Forum engaged their respective constituents asking them to describe the future that they envisioned for themselves and their territory; to identify areas of common importance and concern and to articulate the direction and growth that they wanted to see for their territory over the next 20 to 30 years.

As Premier, I also reached out to the NWT residents and organizational representatives to hear their priorities, hopes and dreams for the future. I called my part of the initiative Creating our Future Together. I made a special effort to reach the young people, the future leaders of our territory. I look forward to working with my Northern Leaders’ Forum colleagues and hosting a youth forum in July 2011 to wrap up their engagement in this initiative.

In addition, I invited high school students to put their vision of the future in an essay and enter it into a contest for the opportunity to be chosen Premier for the day. In our Assembly today, Mr. Speaker, is the winner of that contest and I would like to congratulate Ms. Erin Nadli...

---Applause

...and all of our territory’s youth for the inspirational thoughts, comments and ideas that they brought forward.

All of the submissions I received from individuals and organizations, roundtable participants and youth were summarized in the Creating our Future Together report, which I tabled during the February session.

Mr. Speaker, last month in Inuvik the Northern Leaders’ Forum met once again to share our findings and discuss common themes from our engagements that could form the basis of a vision for our territory and the beginnings of a roadmap to our future.

Later today I will table the document “Forging the Future – Anchored in our Past, Building on our Present.” It reflects a vision for our future, developed with the input of residents -- young and old -- industry, businesses, non-government and not-for-profit organizations.

Mr. Speaker, this document makes it clear that NWT residents across the Northwest Territories share and experience many areas of common interest and desire. Of course, identifying shared goals was the easy part. Much work remains to be done to ensure this vision becomes reality.

The challenge is translating the ideals of this document into actions. That task rests with each and every one of us: leaders, government workers, business people, community volunteers, parents and youth. We must all be part of the solution. My hope is that this inspirational document will become part of our conversations over the next few months as we are asked to consider and elect candidates to leadership positions in our territory, including the territorial election this fall.

It has truly been an honour and a privilege to work with leaders in developing this vision and to have had the opportunity to sit down with people from all walks of the NWT to share their views on a common future for us all. I would encourage future leaders to listen to what NWT residents have said, and move our territory forward with courage and conviction.

The issue with the health boards is that in trying to get the numbers, some have not been able to provide the additional numbers, so there may be some additional summer students out there that we’re not aware of. The other area is we’ve given them budgets to operate within and we’ve given them the authority to make those decisions, as well. We’ll try to get all the information so that we have fully updated numbers as we progress. I know the Department of Human Resources works with all departments to try to pool all those together and we’ll continue to do that.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thought I heard Public Works and Services or Transportation in his statement. It went on for a while, so I lost track.

Seriously, though, the issue of student hires has been one that this government has pushed and worked with the Department of Human Resources and all departments to improve on our numbers. The fiscal situation that we find ourselves in, the departments are doing their best to improve on that, but as we’ve heard from a number of Ministers, with our fiscal restraints departments have had to voluntarily squeeze in some areas. We’re still trying to match or do a bit better in some areas than we did previously. There are areas where, yes, it’s weighted heavy. When some departments have only a headquarters function, other departments help balance that off, because we’re into all communities and regions and will continue to try to improve on that.

I believe we will be there this summer, with a total of five between the two departments.

The process that we use, number one is if there...and through the Department of Human Resources working through a number of categories and programs we have in place. For example, as individuals go through to college or university and they have specific training that could then be used by the department in some of the work we have scheduled for the summer season.

I’ll use last year for an example. We knew we were going to be tasking our people within Aboriginal Affairs and Intergovernmental Relations on the Northern Leaders’ Forum work on vision exercise, so we hired a couple of individuals there to help us with that work. So it’s that kind of planning when we know we have additional work to be done that we would begin that planning process, align with the pool of students that have been registered with the work that would be required if it fits with their school and experience in that area and progressive training in a number of areas.

I must say as well, though, at times we are targeted in a sense, pointing out that at the senior management table we seem to have a lack of Aboriginal people there, I can go through a list of Aboriginal people who have come up through the system and that have been scooped, I might say, by other departments as they’ve moved on to permanent jobs within the government in other departments. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have one that is hired and two positions that are in the process of being filled within Executive. Within Aboriginal Affairs I have two working in the department and another P1 in the process, as well.

Thank you. The estimation of, for example, 2.5 cents per kilowatt hour will impact residents of about $17 a month. We know it is an increase. We’ve tried to minimize the overall construction costs. One of the things we’ve done with the contract is risk sharing, and that may be able to lower the actual amount that we’ve budgeted and reduce the contingency, for example. So right now the process as it would work out is the construction would have to be completed and the overall budget looked at and the impact then passed on. So it would be beyond the life of the 16

th

Assembly. Well, it will have to be after the

final completion of the project that rates would be adjusted. So I can’t speak for the 17

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Assembly on

what they might do to try to mitigate something of this nature. Thank you.