Evidence of meeting #38 for Indigenous and Northern Affairs in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was nwt.
Liberal
Todd Russell Liberal Labrador, NL
It's a very interesting concept and one that I think we should get a bit more information on. People know about the program, the food mail program. Do people want it but they want it enhanced?
President and Chief Executive Officer, North West Company
It was just announced in the U.S. that they're now accepting food stamps. It's a major thing, and it's expected to continue even if stimulus spending starts to get curtailed. It's an ongoing program, but it was enhanced in the U.S., and it will likely continue to be enhanced. That's a recession counterbalance effort, but the mechanics of it have been established for years. They're well known, and the U.S. is the model for it.
Liberal
Todd Russell Liberal Labrador, NL
Is it similar in Alaska? Is there an ongoing program in Alaska that the state offers its people?
President and Chief Executive Officer, North West Company
This is a federal program administered by the state, so we also have it in our stores in Hawaii and in the U.S. Virgin Islands. In Guam we have three stores. Any remote U.S. territory has a food stamp program that's federally funded.
Liberal
Todd Russell Liberal Labrador, NL
It's very interesting. I thank you for that.
That's the end of my questions.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bruce Stanton
Thank you, Mr. Russell.
Now we'll go to Mr. Clarke for five minutes.
Conservative
Rob Clarke Conservative Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to thank the witnesses for coming in today.
Our committee is dealing with economic development for northern territories, and you mentioned pellet energy. I'm kind of curious. For economic development there are so many gamuts in which a company can operate. First, in my riding in northern Saskatchewan right now they're looking at the feasibility of putting it in two of the sawmill plants because they're not as dependent on the American market, but they have another product they can market.
When you're looking at economic development, there are many benefits such as clean energy, the transportation.
Maybe what I'll just do is ask a question. You just respond and I'll just keep on going. How many businesses or homes in the Northwest Territories are right now dependent on pellet energy?
Executive Director, Arctic Energy Alliance
Right now I would guess we have about 10 commercial systems running.
Conservative
Rob Clarke Conservative Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK
And how do they ship it? Do they ship it in chip trucks?
Executive Director, Arctic Energy Alliance
Because we're far away from the source of the biomass, we have to use pelletized wood chips, so they're compressed into pellets and then shipped with grain-haul trucks.
Conservative
Rob Clarke Conservative Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK
Okay. How many vehicles are there on, say, a weekly basis? Or is it on a monthly basis?
Executive Director, Arctic Energy Alliance
I'd have to give pretty rough numbers, but I'd say we're bringing in, roughly, five trucks a month.
Conservative
Rob Clarke Conservative Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK
Okay. And is there a business plan to increase the consumption right now?
Executive Director, Arctic Energy Alliance
It's something that's happening both in the private sector and in the government. The territorial government has a strategy to try to use more biomass.
Conservative
Rob Clarke Conservative Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK
So we're looking more or less at a storage facility being built in....
Executive Director, Arctic Energy Alliance
It is not. It should be, but right now all the pellets are coming in by grain truck and the storage on-site is enough to hold a whole grain truck. You may see this later on. Each site has a big grain silo that holds the pellets in it. There's a bit of an issue there. When the ice is out on the Mackenzie River, as it is right now, you can't get in a grain truck so you can't resupply, so they bring in enough to last. For more remote communities you need to bring in a bigger supply, like a year's supply.
Conservative
Rob Clarke Conservative Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK
With a pellet facility, though, what would be the possible employment opportunities? One, you would probably have to have a general manager, but then you'd have to have the yard workers and everything like that.
Executive Director, Arctic Energy Alliance
It would be similar to the infrastructure that exists now for distributing fuel oil. To do it properly you need a farm with some kind of arrangement of tanks and workers. And you'd find that a tank farm costs a lot of money. It's a good way to develop business, because you have to pay a lot of engineers and a lot of people to develop these very technical pieces of equipment in remote sites, whereas a grain silo can be built for $10,000 instead of $10 million.
Conservative
Conservative
Conservative
John Duncan Conservative Vancouver Island North, BC
With respect to those grain trucks, as I guess they're called, there's a lot of pelletization going on in northern Alberta. There's a lot going on in British Columbia. Is that a pretty competitive market? The only reason you would be buying from Alberta rather than from B.C. would be the transportation differential.
Executive Director, Arctic Energy Alliance
Yes, the closer you can get them from, the better.
Right now, most of the production in Canada is being shipped to Europe. They're putting it on ships through B.C. and the Panama Canal and shipping it to Sweden and Belgium and places like that. They're running them into the power plants.
For us, it's all about whether you're on a natural gas network. If you're not, and you're relatively close to a sawmill, you can pelletize, and it can be much cheaper than oil.
Conservative
John Duncan Conservative Vancouver Island North, BC
When you say that this material is considered carbon neutral, does that include the transport?
Executive Director, Arctic Energy Alliance
No, it doesn't. It takes approximately twice as many vehicles to move the pellets as it does to move the oil, but the net impact is that technically it's 98% carbon neutral. It's something like that.
The transportation isn't too bad, unless you start transporting it right across the country or something like that, but then you lose your economics. That's how I see it.