EdinburghNLP/nunavut-hansard-plusplus huggingface dataset:
On the energy side of things with wind power using wind turbines, I believe the last time I had an opportunity to see what was occurring in Alaska, some things that I’ve seen written and wrote about Alaska was that there were considerable subsidies put in place by the Alaskan Government to be able to have that wind energy there. There are so many issues with the synchronization of wind and the diesel generators that are technical.
The short answer is yes, the Power Corporation and the Energy Secretariat are willing to work with communities, wherever possible, to be able to look at energy efficient ways. We’ve done that, for example, when you look at what’s occurred just recently in Rankin Inlet, with the reheat projects and with some of the other reheat projects we’re doing across the territory, and certainly now, we’re trying to get Nunavut Energy Centre up and running Nunavut wide type programs.
So the answer is a very strong and positive yes.
I thank the minister for that response. Also it’s good to hear.
It hasn’t always been that way in the past as the minister knows, before I was MLA, I was the mayor in the community and I was in the private sector.
We did approach the Government Nunavut on several occasions for support and it wasn’t there.
Other individuals in my community who are working on energy projects were giving up in frustration.
One individual, who’s left Cambridge Bay actually, he must’ve dedicated close to 15 to 18 years of his life to a project in Cambridge Bay before he gave up in frustration and left the territory.
My question for the minister on this particular document, it’s an interesting document, and it’s called a discussion paper and it contains a lot of useful information.
I’m wondering if the minister could explain how the Government of Nunavut is going to use this document in terms of going forward from today.
We’ve had some discussion, we look at the genesis of this document that came out of how we tried to structure energy and taking over the Power Corporation in the early years of Nunavut.
Since 1991, we’ve had two documents, Ikuma I and Ikuma II, which talked about the energy related areas and talked about setting up the Power Corporation and so on.
And in the next stage now is the Ikummatiit to look at an energy strategy for Nunavut.
After we have some opportunities on the discussion paper and get more of a feedback, sometime in September, we’re going to try putting into play and practice some of the recommendations that we’ve heard from the public, from what we hear today, for example, in the House and what we’ve heard over the last several months from Nunavut.
We’ll bring that forward into an energy strategy.
Right now, we’re on the consultation phase; the next phase this fall would be then to put together the strategy itself.
What we’re discussing today is actually the discussion paper on Ikummatiit.
I thank the minister for the information. Can the minister tell the committee what feedback the Government of Nunavut has received to date on the document? You mentioned that it’s been on the website, and I take it’s probably been distributed to some organizations and individuals in Nunavut, what type of feedback have you received to date?
Hon. Ed. Picco: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We’ve heard quite a few comments already on the consultations that we’ve been doing on the energy strategy. I’ll just read a couple of the summits and give an example of the range.
When asked to rate the existing energy system in Nunavut, the majority of our participants, people who have given us input, felt that it was a need to change in all areas of energy production and the energy system.
People felt that Nunavut’s energy system needs to be more environmental, responsive, affordable, and reliable. That’s across the territory that we’re hearing this information.
Two primary barriers to homeownership and business, and we’ve heard that here in the House, was the lack of capital to invest in energy efficiency, and renewable energy matters, and the lack of government or utility incentive.
So there’s a whole range of things that we’ve heard from Nunavummiut.
It is on the website, as the member has said. We’ve had the discussion document distributed across Nunavut, and we’ve had a lot of feedback through some of the consultations that we’ve actually done in communities too.
We’ve just had one a few weeks ago here in Iqaluit, for example.
I thank the minister for that information. The minister mentioned December 2007, that he wants to have something completed.
Can the minister be more specific in terms of what the Government of Nunavut’s timeline is for the development of the energy strategy, and any associated implementation and communication plans with Nunavummiut?
We’ve put the discussion paper out, as I think the members know; I think they were tabled in the House on March 16, 2007.
Since March 16, over the last two months, April and May, we’ve actually visited and done consultation sessions in Rankin Inlet, Qikiqtarjuaq, Iqaluit, and Cambridge Bay.
We’ve also focused on the hospitality outfitting business sectors, the retailing sector, the mining sector, we’ve talked to the hunters and trappers organizations, the Inuit organizations, carving and arts sectors, we’ve talked to the NAM, which is the Nunavut Association of Municipalities, and we’ve even talked to the union and property management firms.
We’ve moved in all those types of directions. Once all the information is collated and correlated, we will take that information then and put it into the energy strategy, which we would hope to bring forward this fall, or early 2008. That’s why I gave the date of December 2007.
I certainly support the minister’s initiative in developing an energy strategy.
I’ve asked him on several occasions in the House about an energy strategy. So it’s certainly a positive development. I look forward to seeing the strategy finalized as soon as possible.
With that in mind, can the minister give us an indication of what he anticipates to be the final cost of the creation of the Government of Nunavut’s Energy Strategy?
Just to maybe backup and just to clarify my timeframe, Cabinet is having its retreat, I believe, the first or second week of September, and I would bring most of our information at that time to the Cabinet. I believe that we’re looking at October for the fall session.
Hopefully, we’d be in a position where I would be able to table it at that time and get some debate on it, and maybe have it in place, like I said, by November or December.
The final cost of the actual strategy will have to be inclusive of the discussion paper, as well as the consultation tours, and so on, that we’ve been working on. That hasn’t been any type of huge amounts; it’s been around $100,000 to date.
That’s exclusive of the salary dollars of the people working on it within the different departments, as well as the Energy Secretariat.
I’m sure it will be an interesting discussion at the Cabinet Retreat.
It leads me to my next question, Mr. Chairman. Reading through the document: as I mentioned earlier, it’s an interesting document, and it summarizes everything in a fairly concise place where a person can sort of figure out how the system works.
But I noted that in the Government of Nunavut five of the eight Cabinet Ministers have responsibility for different energy related issues in their portfolios.
My question for the minister, when he’s sitting around with his colleagues: can the minister tell me and tell the House how he ensures cooperation on energy issues when they arise?
Part of the ongoing efforts that we’ve been doing on energy; some of them are visible, like opening up the energy centre and so on. Some of them aren’t visible.
One of those processes that we’ve set up now is a team of senior deputy ministers within the government who have energy related areas under their portfolios as deputy ministers and they come together on a regular basis, and that’s part of a clearing house idea.
Also at the same time, we also have the Nunavut Energy Secretariat, which is headed by Mr. Nino Wischnewski. And that, again, lies with our deputy minister within the government itself.
When it gets to the point of Cabinet discussions on energy and energy related issues, there’s already that basis of information, as well as some debate that has occurred at the ministerial departmental level, for each of the ministers before they get to the Cabinet level Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I thank for the minister for that.
The minister’s answer sort of highlights what I’ve been touching on, and it is quite a convoluted and complicated system. You talk about the Energy Secretariat and Executive Intergovernmental Affairs.
I’m wondering how you interact with the Energy Secretariat on a day-to-day basis. How does that work?
Can you give us a simple explanation about how that’s set up and how you communicate with them, and how you work together to resolve energy issues?
I like the angle that the member has taken on the question.
We just spent almost two hours debating one line item for $1.5 million in a supplementary bill. And here we’re talking about energy, which takes up over 20 percent of the total expenditures of the government.
That has to be coordinated through eight different government departments and Crown agencies.
So when the Energy Secretariat, itself, is working on issues, it has to have feelers out in each government department, and at the same time, it has to look at what subsidy values are being impacted, that includes the Department of Finance which has to look at the budgeting issues around the fuel prices that are going up and down.
Like we said today, every one cent increase in cost, every one cent increase of a litre fuel has cost the Government of Nunavut another $400,000.
That’s unbelievable.
The direction of the Energy Secretariat and the Ministers responsible for Energy, that’s myself, is to try and coordinate what is occurring within that file through the liaison offices of the Energy Secretariat.
Also to take another tack here. When you’re sitting around the Cabinet table discussing energy issues, can you tell me how consensus is reached in circumstances where the minister would disagree on energy related issues?
Hon. Ed. Picco: What I can tell you, Mr. Chairman, when there hasn’t been any disagreement; we haven’t gotten to that point yet around energy areas.
I think everyone in Cabinet realizes very quickly when you see 20 percent of your budget is gone out the door to one particular area like energy, then it’s hard to have a control on it when you see the prices of things go up and down.
Everyone wants to try and cut back and be as efficient as we can.
Again, like I said earlier, that type of debate just now on $1.5 million, $1.8 million for two hours, we’re talking about $200 million or more of our total budgets when we talk about energy issues.
You have that type of debate but there is no need for reconciliation or a referee to come into the room or anything of that regard. This is not the USC.
I don’t want it to come across like I’m cynical, but I’m encouraged by the document.
I sincerely hope that the minister is sincere in what he is saying, that the government is serious that they want to save money; they want to initiate energy efficient type of projects that will reduce our dependency on fossil fuels.
It puts everything in a nice clear perspective of how serious the situation is, but being government; government has a reputation for making up these nice documents and preparing discussion papers. We joke about discussion papers that it’s just a thing to delay discussion, instead of making the hard decisions that we have to make.
With my comments in mind, can the minister tell me, ultimately, who in the government is responsible for energy related decisions that will or have to be made going forward?
That is part of the discussion that we’ve talked about.
As I said earlier, we have eight different departments and agencies that are involved in the energy field. One of the recommendations that are coming out of the Ikummatiit Strategy is to look at amalgamating and integrating all the energy related areas under one minister, which hasn’t occurred yet.
We know that POL is under one department, and the Power Corporation is under a different minister and so on and so forth.
That’s one of the recommendations that are coming out of the document.
I certainly appreciate the minister and regret that the individuals that he alluded to are not at the table.
I don’t know where to begin, but number one; I think we’re living in a very critical situation and I don’t really truly believe that Nunavummiut are truly aware of the frightening situation we’re facing with energy costs continuing to skyrocket.
We have a significant amount of homeowners, as well as private sector, that truly depend on the free market system that we have in Nunavut.
Therefore, I say with a tremendous amount of sincerity, I think we’re in a very serious situation.
And with continuing world prices of petroleum products that are increasing at an alarming rate, which scares me in a sense, yet, I’m not fully sure that our approach in dealing with the energy strategy is really the right approach.
I think we have, the government is ‘sugar coating’ these very serious issues that we’re dealing with by saying everything is under control and all is well. I’m not sure. I think we’re in a very critical and serious situation.
I appreciate the minister for tabling it and with my help he was able to table the document.
I missed some of the events that were happening in the local meetings.
I really think they need to advertise the serious impacts because they are important.
I don’t think it’s important enough to meet with one regional organization and say we had a community strategy.
I think it should be broadly advertised.
For instance, in Rankin Inlet, I had a very small radio show about energy and energy costs, and the ongoing problems that we have with billing and overestimates using the estimating practice, and not having information that says in your bill that the estimate was corrected on this day; nothing to that effect.
People responded about energy.
One of the comments that I got is probably frightening to many is why don’t we look at investing in uranium power.
That’s a practical idea from someone who had seen technology related to uranium because they did not see the minister promoting more hydro development.
Is it really practical in Nunavut?
Are you going to be able to afford raising that amount of money? Is it contingent on the federal government as a partner?
I don’t know. I’m not sure we can do it single-handedly in Nunavut, to go on hydro. The environment is certainly going to be impacted.
Like David Alagalak said, if you’re just going to rely on the water sheds coming in from the hills and the mountains, one day you’re going to run out of water on the Sylvia Grinnell River. I’m not sure 100 percent there is a huge enough lake. That’s one example.
We need to hear from the government what is practical. Should we be expanding support for the wind power? I believe that is something that we have; I think we have the wind source.
Why is it not practical; when will it become practical? That kind of stuff.
I looked at the Keewatin Chamber of Commerce. I don’t know whether that was presented it to the minister. They said, in their annual report that I tabled the other day, that we should be looking at and maybe try and get a partnership with the Manitoba Government to expand the grid of the Manitoba Hydro to at least four communities: Arviat, Whale Cove, Rankin Inlet, and Chesterfield Inlet - whether we could expand it to Baker Lake, that depends.
I think Baker Lake is probably in a better situation than many of the Kivalliq communities because they are now going to have a partner in developing energy sources. I think there are a number of mines that are going to happen out there.
So Mr. Chairman, I think we are in a very critical situation. The price of petroleum products are not going down. It scares me.
There was one elder in Rankin Inlet that said, “I’m scared, too. What’s going to happen? We can’t afford the small amount of monthly bills, even if we’re subsidized.”
Energy products are so unaffordable. We cannot afford it anymore.
We want to hear from the minister, when we are going to get serious about those? I think there are many number of times we ‘sugar coat’ a number of huge practical...When we’re looking all these bio-mass projects, we’re looking at wind power and we’re looking at hydro.
When you read that, and by the way, it’s a good document, that’s why I insist that it be tabled.
I really want to, in my opening comments here, be completely fair in presenting the energy strategy or discussing it. I truly believe the minister should hire somebody, either someone who is doing full-time discussions; I don’t believe the QEC, itself, could handle that.
I will believe the minister is serious in presenting the energy strategy and seeking ideas when he appoints somebody who is going to be practical, fair, and spending full-time at developing ideas.
Alternative energy sources are going to have a tremendous impact, not only on the business community, the communities, the consumers, but it will also have a tremendous challenging thing that will come upon our environment.
At the same time, the world is running out of oil, in many respects, too.
So I want to ask the minister: are there alternative sources of energy that are practical for Nunavut?
Do we wait until all of the consultation and everything is complete before we finally say, ‘Oh, we found a magical idea and it’s going to be this.’
So in the practical approach, we may already have some idea of where we should be concentrating on, and if so, minister, I know I’m spending a lot of time on this, if so, what are they?
So that’s my first question.
First of all, I want to thank the member for his support, and indeed, the member is correct with his prodding that we’re able to bring this document forward.
I think it gives us a good opportunity to debate issues around energy and everything that that includes.
At this time, I would like to ask the person that Mr. Curley has been talking about before, and over the last several months we had no one who was a dedicated person working within the Energy Secretariat; we didn’t even have an Energy Secretariat.
We’ve done what Mr. Curley is talking about; we’ve actually hired a full-time person in the Energy Secretariat as a director, a person with extreme skills in business, with the private sector, and in government.
He’s with us today, so I would like to ask him to join us at the witness table, Mr. Nino Wisnewski, and then I’ll get into answering the questions asked by Mr. Curley. Mr. Nino Wisnewski.
Chairman: Thank you, Minister Picco. (interpretation) Do you agree to have Mr. Wisnewski go up to the witness table?
This is a good opportunity because you have more time in simple questions to answer questions. So I appreciate the member asking several questions. I just want to deal with a few things very quickly.
We could replace one-third of the fossil fuels we use in Nunavut right now, so that’s fuel purchases, we could replace one-third of the fossil fuels used in Nunavut for electricity can be replaced by hydro. That’s the direction that we’re moving in and there are several reasons for that.
When we look at wind energy as an example, which has come up several times, wind energy really works well when you have a grid system to put it in.
What I mean by a grid system is when you have 10, 12, 15 wind turbines or windmills circulating and creating electricity let’s say in Ottawa, or Winnipeg, or places like that, because in those cases, whatever amount of energy you create from the wind can be sent in to other parts of the city or other parts of the province as it were because you have an electrical grid.
Whatever that’s being produced in Winnipeg could go into St. Boniface and so on.
In Nunavut, if you need 10 megawatts of electricity for example, in Iqaluit you draw, I believe, 10 megawatts of heat up to 12 to 15 megawatts.
So let’s say you had your wind turbine system in place and you could draw five megawatts of power from that wind turbine system.
If you needed to have eight megawatts, then that means your diesel generators would have to kick in for the next three watts.
As everyone knows, wind is never at a constant speed.
If the wind speed drops down to four megawatts, now your generator is going to kick up and pick up the extra couple of watts of electricity because the City of Iqaluit, with just Apex, or Pangnirtung, or Rankin Inlet are all self-contained, they can’t put their electricity any or other place, and that’s one of the problems is synchronizing the generator with the wind turbine.
You will still need the generators, you will have to still go out and buy fuel for the generators and so on.
The cost of producing one kilowatt of electricity with the wind turbine, when you look at the size of the wind turbine you would have to put in place, and the number to have any significant savings would probably, and there are different estimates, be between 70 to 80 cents per kilowatt hour.
That’s why in the Alaska, an example that Mr. Peterson talks about, the Alaskan Government is highly and heavily subsidizing the electricity that is coming from the wind turbine so that the consumer can actually purchase it.
So, in this case, in Nunavut, we are actually subsidizing the cost of electricity, as every member knows, at the average cost of 37 cents a kilowatt hour, like Mr. Curley has pointed out, we subsidize it right down to around 19 cents a kilowatt hour.
It would cost us a small fortune if we had to subsidize from 50 cents a kilowatt hour down to that same amount.
So in several reasons, it’s not technically feasible to do that because of the synchronicity problems and so on.
However, with the hydro development that we’ve been talking about, we would be able to service that area.
Right now, the exciting news for Mr. Curley and the people in the Keewatin is that we’re putting an RFP out in the next several weeks for hydro development opportunities within the Kivalliq region of Nunavut.
The transmission line that Mr. Curley talked about, there was a study done by Manitoba Hydro, and I’ve met with the Minister of Energy from Manitoba Hydro at least three different times, Mr. Sale and Mr. Chomiak, when they were ministers in Winnipeg, to talk about the opportunities that may be there for bringing a line and having a grid system in place coming out of Manitoba.
I can say without fear of contradiction, there wasn’t much support for that because it didn’t make much sense to bring a line into Nunavut.
There was a pre-feasibility study done on bringing an electrical generation line north of Churchill into the Keewatin and hooking up Rankin Inlet, Arviat, Baker Lake, and Chesterfield Inlet. The cost would have been around $900 million, and the feasibility study said it was feasible to do that.
But that also meant that every house in the Keewatin that would be hooked up, would have to convert to electric heat, for example.
So there were a lot of caveats involved in that line.
The best way to look at the development of possible hydro is to actually develop for ourselves, in Nunavut, and then export that extra power with the help of a line.
Now, Mr. Curley made another good point.
He said, “Where are you going to come up with this $400,000,000 or $500,000,000 basically to start doing these energy projects?”
We will need the federal government to come on board.
No different than what the federal government did with the Hibernia Project.
The Hibernia Project was a several multi-billion dollar project, and there is no way that one province could finance it. It was going to be languishing. The federal government stepped up to the plate and took an equity position in the Hibernia Oil Field.
It’s similar to what we see here in Nunavut. There is no reason why the federal government couldn’t come in with an equity positions in hydro site or in hydro development in Nunavut.
Number one, we’d be eliminating greenhouse gases.