Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise once again to continue the conversation of power costs and the cost of living for all Northerners. You’ve heard from me and other Members about how important this subject is, and we certainly know the problem. We know the problem is affordability for Northerners. We also understand how complicated this problem is because we know the system must generate the money to cover its costs and that cost falls upon the folks who need power.
So we know what part of the problem is, but what do we do if we don’t do anything? Well, we know it hurts working families trying to get by day to day. We know it affects our population because people can’t stand to live here anymore. We know it hurts the success of business trying to get along and provide services to Northerners in every single community. Whether you’re in a big community or a small community, whether you’re a big business or a small business, the cost of power has a huge impact on what you do.
If we’re not helping the bottom line of the everyday family, I question what we are really doing here. If we’re not helping the bottom line of business, I wonder what risk we put them at and ask myself, what are we doing here? Are we doing enough?
We must look at the bigger picture and ask ourselves how are we pulling this all together. As I understand as we’ve started the discussion here, we must focus in on how to bring the bigger picture together in a matter that focuses in on delivering a better bottom line for Northerners, whether you’re a family trying to get by day to day or you’re a business trying to meet the bottom line so you can make enough money to pay employees to be working there.
It’s been said by experts that the Northwest Territories has the most complicated 65 megawatts around. It’s not me saying this. It’s an expert saying this. In this modern world we’ve heard how important power generation is, because it touches every element of our lives, whether it’s kids using iPads in schools, whether we charge our cell phones, whether we go to the library to turn the lights on so we can read books. That power turns on to make sure that you can stay warm or you can keep your important things cold in the refrigerator.
Power is essential, just like food, water and shelter. We must be asking ourselves the right questions: is it time to restructure now and how would we do that? Is it time to ask ourselves how do we develop
the generation piece and pull all our distribution networks together?
There was a plan called Creating a Brighter Future and it asked how do we do this and which way are we going. It’s time we had the real policy discussions such as do we need the PUB, what future does the Power Corp hold before us, and does our energy policy meet the needs of Northerners?
I’ll be asking those questions and more later today.