Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today I would also like to speak to the issue of the now withdrawn application of the Northwest Territories Power Corporation. This subject of utilities and the regulation of those utilities is a very complex matter. I had the experience of sitting on the board of directors of the Northwest Territories Power Corporation for three years and I do not purport to be any kind of an expert on that subject, even after that close-up experience.
However, what I do know is that I had some very serious concerns about the process that was underway and I do support the intervention by this government as the shareholder. To move from community-based rates to a single zone, flat rate across the North is a major shift in how revenue is raised for the Power Corporation. In fact, conventional wisdom was that community-based rates were a fair way to raise revenue, given that a well-conceived form of territorial support was in place to act as the mechanism to offset the cost in communities where rates were higher than those in Yellowknife, so in fact the territorial support program did have the same net effect of levelizing the rates.
Given the Power Corporation's desire and intention to move away from its rate structure, and given the unquantified resulting impacts from such a shift, some very preliminary research and key consultations did not occur. Regular Members of this Legislature, for example, were not given an adequate opportunity to engage in the debate in this manner. Mr. Lafferty has spoken today about our style of consensus government, so this was a really key piece that was missing from this particular initiative, the consultation with the Regular Members.
Once the application was filed, some would argue that anyone who wished to intervene had an opportunity to enter that debate. I disagree with that for a number of reasons. For one thing, as I stated earlier, the regulation of a power utility is very complex and almost always necessitates the costly involvement of people with expertise in that field.
Secondly, the playing field is hardly even, given the seemingly unlimited resources of the utility to advance their side of the argument stacked against the limited financial resources of interveners who may or may not be able to recover their costs. It is safe to say that this debate would have cost millions of dollars and even if everyone's costs were recoverable, the consumer ultimately would have paid for this process.
Mr. Speaker, I want to state that the Public Utilities Board hearing is not the only process available for consultation. A general rate application will still proceed in any event and small communities, as any other individual, will have an opportunity to speak to that general rate application.
Mr. Krutko made reference to the fact that this is the only opportunity small communities have had to put their case forward. In fact, that is not true. They could intervene in any general rate application before the PUB. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
-- Applause