Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today I rise to address the issue of the removal of the board of directors of the Northwest Territories Power Corporation. First off, Mr. Speaker, I would like to make it clear that I oppose the one-rate zone application. In fact, I had filed with the Public Utilities Board to intervene in opposition to the application.
So when the Premier advised me of the order that they were giving the Power Corporation to withdraw their application, I was torn. I was torn because, Mr. Speaker, I have always maintained that the Power Corporation should operate under a board of management with no political pressure. One of the main reasons for that, Mr. Speaker, is that I discovered when becoming the Minister responsible that political commitments had been made to communities, or at least communities felt that they had heard commitments from political leaders.
These commitments, had they been followed through, would have cost an awful lot of money and were not necessary to increase reliability of the power supply. Everyone would have paid more for power, even though it would not have improved the power supply.
Mr. Speaker, while the government moved to accomplish what I wanted by providing this direction to the Power Corporation, I am very disappointed that they did not follow through on the process. Once the application had been filed with the Public Utilities Board, the government should have filed an intervention with the Public Utilities Board and we should have then discussed the issue in front of the board.
Mr. Speaker, this situation actually illustrates an issue of communications, and really of bad communications, because to my way of thinking, we never should have gotten to this point. When I heard about the application I assumed that Cabinet had agreed to this process. This, after all, was a major policy shift; a social approach to determining power rates.
I had expected that there had been consultation with the Cabinet, particularly since the Minister responsible was at the meeting when I heard about the application. I guess I should have known then that there was a problem with communications when at the same meeting, a senior deputy minister said that Cabinet was not in support of the one-rate application.
Mr. Speaker, I cannot believe that the board members, most of whom I know well, would have gone ahead with this application if they had been told clearly that the Government of the Northwest Territories did not support the one-rate zone application.
I have no doubt that they feel that they have had the carpet suddenly pulled out from under them. Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.