Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to ask the Minister if the Minister and Cabinet support a one-rate zone? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my questioning of this in an earlier sitting I was told that, until the energy strategy is tabled, discussion about the creation of a one-rate zone for power will not occur in this Legislative Assembly. I would like to ask the Minister, why is he leaving this in the hands of the people who are out there when we as a government should be legislating and making sure that everybody is treated equally in the Territories? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is for the Minister responsible for the Northwest Territories Power Corporation, the Honourable Joe Handley. Mr. Speaker, yesterday in my Member's statement I emphasized how my constituents are anticipating paying a low rate for power through the creation of a one-rate zone. I would like to ask the Minister if he can update the House as to where the issue of a one-rate zone for electricity is at? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have noticed a disturbing trend that is occurring in the Territories. We have doctors, nurses, teachers and sports organizations threatening to walk away if they do not get their way. Mr. Speaker, people have to start looking at why they have chosen the positions that they have and who they are here for. When just maintaining existing services is a priority for this government, threatened walkouts only create fear and division. I think that, where the government is involved, the public has to realize there is a large debt and that finding more and more and more money is not always possible, especially when cutbacks are happening.

Sometimes in this House there is a lot of division. Debates rage, but no solutions are found and these issues turn into emotional battlefields with no winners. Mr. Speaker, instead of taking a position and making a stand, maybe all Members of the Legislative Assembly and these groups need to meet and reach a common goal. I know this can be effective. As a Member who helped to establish the Special Joint Committee on Non-Tax-Based Community Affairs, we formed this committee to identify the needs of the smaller communities. I was pleased that on Monday, June 9th, everyone in the House agreed to work on the motions that we introduced. Mr. Speaker, this was a productive use of our time with concrete results.

With regard to the creation of a new sports and recreation board, the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs stated last Thursday that there were three reasons for the suggested establishment of a new board: one, to provide small communities more opportunities to participate in the sports and recreation system; two, to ensure representation by small communities in the decision-making process; three, to establish a mechanism to allocate lottery resources fairly among communities and regions.

Mr. Speaker, whether or not these objectives can be met by forming a new sports and recreation board is creating a lot of division. It might be more effective if all the players sat down and worked together toward common solutions. Mr. Speaker, I think the whole territory loses when we fail to work together. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Last year, the board of the Northwest Territories Power Corporation took the initiative to create a one-rate power zone for power used across the Territories. Mr. Speaker, the idea of a one-rate zone means everyone pays the same rate for power use regardless of where they live in the Territories. This rate structure was something that most communities in the Territories who pay a higher power cost would have benefited from.

Mr. Speaker, before any meaningful input could be given, the Premier and Cabinet stepped in and stopped the public consultations. Cabinet stated that they wanted to hear from people with regard to the territorial energy strategy before any change to the rate structure was made. Consultations have taken place throughout the Western Arctic to hear the public and what type of energy Northerners want to use and how much they want to pay for power.

I know that the Energy Secretariat hopes to complete the strategy and have Cabinet table it for this June session. Mr. Speaker, time is short as session ends tomorrow and I, as well as my constituents, have been waiting to see the document. In particular, I would like to know how the input which people in my riding gave to the secretariat in February will be reflected in lower power rates. Mr. Speaker, I don't think my region is much different than any other region that consists of small communities. People in the commercial and private sector are having difficulty paying their power bills.

By introducing a one-rate zone, Cabinet would be doing much more than simply making the cost of living affordable for many Northerners. Most communities that rely on diesel generation already have a higher cost of living than those on hydro electricity. Most of the communities that benefit from the low rates of hydro electricity already benefit from being on a road system which, in turn, already lowers their cost of living.

This government has many initiatives on the go, many of which involve infrastructure partnerships which could increase the power rates even more, Mr. Speaker. Something has to give. These communities on diesel generation cannot afford to have their costs increased by government initiatives. I think it is time that we re-examine the structure for power rates, and move to either a one-rate zone or a system where we have a diesel generation rate or a hydro user rate. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Minister said it himself: the public service employees under the public service now have rights. Their rights have to be protected. But how do we protect the rights of the people out there that are delivering the service for us? Do they not have rights? Are you trying to tell me that they do not have any rights and only the public service that is in there right now has rights? Right now we are discriminating against them because they may be contracting to us or maybe they are a board and I do not see why we should say they do not have the same rights. I will just stop here. My time is up.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I also think that this act needs to be amended to include not only the people working for this government directly, but for people that are working for this government indirectly. By indirectly, I am talking about community services boards, which are a creation of this government to deliver services on the behalf of the territorial government, the same thing the territorial government is doing for the federal government.

We have different employers out there. We have federal government public servants, we have local public servants, municipal public servants and we have people working for the different divisional boards, community service boards, that are delivering programs on our behalf. We are paying them less money because we are giving them the programs that we do not wish to do, or our government employees in the first place did not want to go in there. So what we do is give them a little bit of money there and say, okay, this will cover your overhead, go and deliver the program. It does not matter what you pay your employees, go forward with it. That is what we are telling them by putting this legislation in just to cover the employees that we have under the government right now.

I was one of the Members that was not in agreement with dealing only with public servants. I wanted to do this territory-wide under a labour act of some kind like the rest of the provinces. Most of the provinces have some kind of act that covers all employees and employers in their territories and provinces.

Right now, I look at this whole thing as if we are saying we want to protect their rights. But we all know that some of our government bureaucrats are getting quite a good paycheque out there to do a job similar to what is being done in the smaller communities. That is against the human rights. We are asking these people to deliver programs on our behalf and they do not have the same rights as the person that is working in Yellowknife or another different community that is covered by the Public Service Act.

There is one of the labour boards that I was listening to on the radio one day saying that this government is creating different tiers of public service, different tiers of payment. It is against the Human Rights Act. So I agree with Mr. Krutko that we need to make some changes. I understand the Minister is saying that we should not go there until we have assessed the whole thing. Well, why did we not assess it and then go there? Why are we just rushing into this one? I understand there is section 66 that we are trying to have given to us by Ottawa, but what does that do? What is it doing? Is it protecting high wages or what is it doing? Is it protecting the bonuses? What are we doing here? We do not know. We do not know what kind of equal wages are out there.

I know this government went through an exercise and it was a costly exercise to do what they have done. We are saying that the small businessman cannot do it. I think if there is a will there is a way. If it is not going to work then we can always go back and say it is not going to work, but there are some amendments we need to make, there are some changes we need to make and let us do it in this way. But before we have even gone out there to the public and asked them what they thought, what the small businessman thought or what the large industry thought, we are just going ahead and doing what we want as a government. We are supposed to be out there consulting with the people to make sure that what we are doing is fair to all of them. They have a right to know what we are doing. We create Human Rights Acts and everything without consulting with people. In other areas of different acts we have done in this government, we have not even stepped foot out of Yellowknife and we have dealt with acts. This government is doing things the way they feel is right. They are not going out there and consulting with the public. There are a few things that were done with consultation with the public and the people are happy for that out there. They have input into what is going on and that is what the whole territory is all about.

So I think that if we cannot make these amendments, maybe we should just scrap this bill for now and look at it more. Like the Minister said, we should assess the whole thing and we should not go there until we have assessed it. Using his own words, I hope he will pull his own bill. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister has given me some more information, but still has not answered my question. I would like to ask the Minister again how much of the $5 million is being used for additions treatment right now? The addictions treatment. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm glad for his answer, and the $5 million that he's talking about. How much of the $5 million is being spent on strategies, studies and how much of the $5 million is being spent on treating addictions in the Northwest Territories? Thank you.