Okay. Thank you. I'm pleased to hear that in this forum. I'm going to be looking forward to that debate and the involvement to see what various communities and customers across the NWT have to say. Electricity is an essential service and it's a very costly one, of course, in many of our communities. There is though also, I think, a very real requirement, along with some kind of a subsidy or cost redistribution mechanism, for a strong enough price on it, Mr. Chairman, to promote and stimulate conservation. This is going to be a really interesting discussion of this very essential service. Now is not the time for it, so I won't get into any of the other levels, but I do look forward to it.
Mr. Chairman, there is another aspect of the Power Support Program administration for this year that I wanted to follow up on. I think Mr. Menicoche had already indicated or made reference to the FMBS decision of just a couple months ago to take up the rate rider in the diesel communities. This was a rate rider of about 3.3 cents a kilowatt hour that this government is going to absorb. So customers out there are saved, they are rescued from this interim rate rider. It's going to cost us about $620,000 and could save, depending on where the house and community was, the customer up to about $150 a year, which is a substantial subsidy. So way to go; I'm in favour of it.
Where I wanted to seek some clarification, Mr. Chairman, was in whether or not this is going to be a universally-applied rescue package, if you will. The rate riders that this program comes into affects the diesel communities. We've been advised by the Power Corporation that the communities that are on hydro, which do need some diesel, will also be experiencing a rate rider probably in March of this year. I wanted to ask the Minister, is the move that has already been taken in the diesel communities also going to apply when rate riders come into effect for other communities in the NWT? Will there be universality? Thank you.