Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Nov. 19th, 2009

[Terry Kruger]

As I noted, there were 22 applications.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

There were 22. I'm sorry; I missed that in your comments.

How familiar are you with those applications?

[Terry Kruger]

I'm not really familiar. They are done between the community government and the Ministry of Municipal and Community Affairs.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

So it's hard to say exactly what project they have in mind.

[Terry Kruger]

That's right. I know some of the ones that were improved. There's a replaceable floor for an arena in Aklavik and ventilation systems in other communities. There is a variety of work. I know some communities were looking for compressors for curling rinks.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

It wouldn't necessarily be for building a new rink for each community.

[Terry Kruger]

No. It would have been for repair and maintenance and upgrades.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Yes. I understand that the typical building costs you outlined earlier are much higher through the various communities. I note that in my province of Alberta the number of R-in-C dollars available is not huge, and we have a much larger population, but I understand it--

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Okay.

Well, you can finish that statement. You don't have to just stop cold.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I was going to say I understand that the funding should not be per capita, particularly in the north here. I tend to agree that you need to have much broader funding or a base of funding for those kinds of projects for the communities.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you, Mr. Payne. I appreciate that.

Once again, I will turn the floor over to Mr. Lévesque.

[Yvon Lévesque, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Thank you very much.

I understand very well communities wanting the highway to be extended, regardless of how fast it will be done.

As I see it, if people have the hope that one day the highway will be completed, once the work does begin, this should result in more investments flowing sooner into communities. I'll use James Bay as an example. On average, there is a distance of 110 km between the main road and the communities. Putting in a road, even a gravel one, has truly increased the development potential of these communities. It's been a pleasant surprise to witness their growth and expansion.

In my opinion, on the energy front, if the area is rich in oil and raw natural resources, the potential for developing alternative forms of energy is even greater. If we manage to do that quickly, even a province as wealthy as Alberta could sell its energy and promote green energy sources. This would be a tremendous boon for the country.

I was born in the St. Lawrence River Valley where wind energy has been developed as an energy source. I don't know if this is something that could be contemplated in the NWT. We're talking about spending $450 million on diesel fuel. That's an enormous sum of money, in my opinion. It could pay for 450 windmills in the NWT. And while it may not necessarily cover all of their energy requirements, thermal energy is one possible temporary source of energy when there isn't enough wind. One mine in Sweden operated entirely on wind energy.

Have any studies been done to assess the feasibility of this option?

[Doug Ritchie]

With respect to green energy, we have many opportunities but many challenges. The cost of generating electricity in the Northwest Territories in some communities approaches $2.50 per kilowatt hour, and that's a huge amount of money.

The problem is that moving towards alternative energy takes time and effort. For example, to integrate wind with a diesel system takes time. You have to make sure that when the wind blows, the diesel plant shuts down a little. There are some real challenges, and we are starting that process. For other communities, solar energy in the summertime will make sense.

We need to have every single community in the Northwest Territories experimenting with alternative energy as well as energy conservation. I believe we can do a much better job at energy conservation throughout the valley.

[Yvon Lévesque, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

I would now like to talk to you about the construction season in the Territories. I'm familiar with Nunavik, where the construction season is very short, a mere four months or so of the year. In the James Bay region, the season is a little longer, stretching from June to October.

Approximately when does the construction season start in the NWT and how long does it last?

[Doug Ritchie]

I am not an expert.

[Terry Kruger]

In the southern reaches of the territory, it would be similar to your area. In the higher Arctic, places like Sachs Harbour and Ulukhaktoq, it would be shorter. I'm not sure what the exact building season would be, but it would be two to three months.

[Yvon Lévesque, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

The trucking season is two to three months longs. Is the construction season—

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Unfortunately, we have run out of time and must end our discussion on that note.

You will have time to ask another question later during the next round.

Go ahead, Mr. Duncan.

[John Duncan, Conservative, Vancouver Island North, BC]

Thank you. I get to carry on here.

I started to talk about education as a basic building block for economic development. I think sometimes we're straying away from our mandate, which is economic development. We need to go back there. There's an old saying that if you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there. I don't want to be part of that exercise; I want to be part of the exercise that's chasing our mandate.

I would like to engage both of you in terms of the current education status. I know the importance of the starter group, but I think we want to focus more on post-secondary, because that's more the federal mandate. So with respect to the role of Aurora College, the Mine Training Society, maybe I could ask where we could make some appropriate investments, or focuses or priorities that are different from what's happening now. I know we heard some positive things during our stop in Whitehorse on this front, so it would be interesting to pursue that avenue here as well.

[Doug Ritchie]

Sure, I'll start off. Thank you, Mr. Duncan.

I think one of the challenges in terms of economic development is having a trained workforce. I think there are increasing opportunities in terms of alternative energy, but there is a shortage; we do not have that expertise there. These systems are complicated and they require an attitude where we can work on these things. It takes time, so there has to be patience. If you go to things like oil burner mechanics, the reality is that getting trained oil burning mechanics in communities is often a problem. Knowing how to maintain oil burners well is a challenge.

We need post-secondary education training that looks at those basic things, including our energy use, oil burner mechanics, having people who are skilled in good construction techniques to build energy-efficient houses so we do not have to import skilled labour from the south, and as I was mentioning, alternative energy, learning how to integrate diesel systems with alternative energy, whether it be solar, mini-hydro, or wind energy. All these things are complicated, and you need a trained workforce.

I think it's really important that we try to prepare our workforce for a green economy...and even things such as falling. Because we have put so much emphasis on the non-renewable resource sector, we have neglected, to a large degree, the renewable resource sector. When I was in Jean Marie River, which has a sawmill, they were saying, “We can't do any falling because we don't have someone to teach our guys how to fall properly in a way that would satisfy the workplace safety rules of the Workers' Safety and Compensation Commission. We don't have the right guards on our sawmill to do this type of work.”

We have to make sure that post-secondary programs consider both the non-renewable as well as the renewable sectors. There's a whole gamut of areas where we could have more training.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

We want to get Mr. Kruger in on that. We'll give you an extra 30 seconds, so you have a minute in total, if that's okay.

[Terry Kruger]

In representing community governments, one of our big needs is community government staff—people like senior administrative officers, financial officers, water plant operators. We're very pleased to be working with the Government of the Northwest Territories on the public services capacity initiative. It's $1 million a year to develop training and capacity in communities. They're focusing on SAOs, because it's the most important position in a community government, especially the small ones where you might be the only person there.

We need to develop and increase the level of training among our residents so they're looking to community governments for jobs, whether it's an SAO, finance, a bookkeeper, a water plant operator, because it's essential to good functioning of communities.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Okay, thank you, Mr. Duncan and witnesses. I appreciate that.

Now we've got four questioners left, and we're going to trim this down to three minutes each. We'll go with Mr. Bevington, followed by Mr. Dreeshen, Mr. Bagnell, and Monsieur Lévesque.

So let's go with Mr. Bevington for three minutes.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

You know, when we talk about the north and the cost of living, one of the things I see as essential but very much threatened right now is the subsistence harvest that goes on throughout the north. Our communities are rural and remote. Unlike farming communities, they don't have the food infrastructure that comes with small rural farms. They rely on the land.

Do you have any thoughts on this, Mr. Ritchie, about how this could be improved? How could we ensure that in the future, with climate change, we can see that this very important part of the northern economy is protected?

[Doug Ritchie]

I'm not an expert on the fur industry, but I think obviously it's an important one. I would point out the fact that there was an extremely successful trapping program out of Colville Lake, where a school class was able to earn a substantial amount of money, and I believe they took a trip. So I think it was really skill transfer. They were able to promote that economy, and I would say we cannot forget about the fur economy. We have to make sure there are supports for people who are wishing to work in that area, whether it is some assistance in terms of accessing equipment, for example, or even help to defray a little bit of the cost of starting out. So I think we just cannot forget that industry and I do believe that if the price, for example, of oil continues to rise, there could be an increased demand for a more traditional lifestyle. So we just can't forget about it.

Thank you.