Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest, great interest, to the statements made by the

honourable Member for Thebacha over the past couple of days about NorthwesTel. NorthwesTel is a monopoly. NorthwesTel delivers a service in a protected market. NorthwesTel is a subsidiary of the multinational Bell Corporation.

Mr. Speaker, residents will happily accept to subsidize a high-cost telecommunications system, including the higher-cost communities, only when they know for certain what the detailed cost structure is. Let me put it another way. No subsidization without detailed disclosure on costs, lists of salaries of executives, list of contracts, and failing these, you can be sure, Mr. Speaker, that our resident consumers in any kind of a market will want to drop the use of dead dog, inefficient suppliers at the first opportunity.

How? By moving to alternate suppliers such as AT&T, Sprint, London Telecommunications or Westcom. Why are not these alternate suppliers allowed to operate here, Mr. Speaker? Residents will no longer accept the compulsive anti-market interference in our marketplace. Why do we not have market phone services here, Mr. Speaker? If we are going to have a subsidization system working in the territories, then we must simply have full accountability for the monies that are spent. For instance, what is the return that NorthwesTel makes on its Northwest Territories operations? Have they shared those numbers with us? Perhaps the honourable Member who gave such an impassioned speech over the last couple of days could provide those to the House.

Another instance, Mr. Speaker, why is it that NorthwesTel has a fleet of late model trucks in their yard on the old airport road here in Yellowknife when many citizens of this territory are driving vehicles that are ten years old if they have one. All the while, these same citizens struggle to pay the phone long distance rates, Mr. Speaker, that are sometimes between four and six times higher than in the mainstream. There is something very wrong here, Mr. Speaker. Does all of this sound familiar, Mr. Speaker? It should because this is the same theme that we have been talking about in this House for some days and years now. When NorthwesTel finally releases and makes public the aforementioned, then and only then can or should we look at a subsidy or other government help. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

--Applause