Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I, too, will be supporting this motion. It was quite some time ago I talked to Mr. Yakeleya about this issue about trying to find new ways to help communities. I talked to Norman about saying, well, what if we bumped up the subsidy rate to $800, would that help? We had a bit of a discussion on that and there was some free-flowing talk about does that work, will that suit their needs. You know, we're not 100 percent sure, but there are many ways out there to help folks. That's kind of why I support this motion, is because it looks at different dynamics. Can we help them a little more in the winter months? We don't have to help them so much in the summer months. I mean there are different ways we could do this.
Times have changed, Mr. Speaker. I mean let's think about it. In 1988, a lot of homes didn't have multiple TVs, there were no cell phones and, by the way, if you had a cell phone in 1988, your power bill wasn't a big deal because it probably cost a fortune just to own a cell phone then. Computers, hardly anyone had computers. So really what I'm getting at is the average home has changed. The average home probably has a couple of cell phones; I wouldn't be surprised if people have computers on all the time. So are these power rates reflective of the times? I'm not 100 percent sure and that's an important issue to examine.
Our working poor are out there in the communities just working to pay their power bills. I mean that's not necessarily fair. If you had to go to work every day just to keep the lights on, I mean I think that should be a signal of saying wait a minute, our power bills are so unrealistic our paycheques are just going to that and it really makes people start to wonder why are they going to work.
Mr. Speaker, businesses are troubled, you can see that, the competitiveness out there. We all know that the operation costs are all spilt down back onto the consumers. So I mean if you live in a community, it's unrealistic that you should be paying $4 for a can of coke, or who knows what you pay in Colville Lake for a jug of milk that kids...