How do you top that, Mr. Speaker? He’s a good student, he’s teachable.
Mr. Speaker, there’s a song Dr. Hook sings, “Storms never last, baby.” Mr. Speaker, listen to
this song because there was a really big storm in the Sahtu over the past weekend here. It was so strong that the storm blew out some transponders, or trippers, in Norman Wells. People were fighting after a couple hours of having no power. When it got to the three hour point, they were getting kind of nervous because they didn’t know what was happening.
I just happened to be there and I called the Minister, and the Minister answered right away. The Minister’s on the ball with this one here, Mr. Speaker, because he got back to me right away. Thank God there were some crews in Norman Wells that saved the day for us. If that wasn’t the case, because I understand even Tuktoyaktuk had some trouble with the power outage, and Inuvik, and right down the Mackenzie Valley. There was a big wind. The Minister was saying that the NTPC had to make some priority choices, some difficult choices for our communities, where to fly into.
Norman Wells was having a blizzard with gusts of wind of about 60 to 80 miles per hour. Thank God, also, it was minus 46, so it wasn’t too bad. But people were getting kind of nervous.
So, I want to say thank you to the good NTPC workers who were there. They found out where the issue was. They restored the power in just over three hours. The Town of Norman Wells staff will do as much as they can. People in the town of Norman Wells were running around seeing that everybody was okay. You know, Mr. Speaker, I understand that it’s also in Tuktoyaktuk and Inuvik, but I think it’s about time that the Sahtu gets its own NTPC crew, linemen, or do something, because if it wasn’t for that crew there, for whatever reason being there, we would have had the same troubles maybe like Tuktoyaktuk, you know, not having our power hooked up in that time the workers were there.
So, I’ll have questions for the Minister. I want to thank the NTPC crew and their staff for the good work they did in the communities. Mahsi.