Masi, Mr. Speaker. [Translation] Today, I am going to speak on electricity in my region. Right now, Whati doesn't have electricity to their community. They only have power by diesel generator, and it has stopped so many times, for over 20 hours. The residents of Whati are very concerned. I want to make a statement regarding that. [Translation ends]

Mr. Speaker, last month, the community of Whati suffered a major power outage. It lasted an unbelievable well over 20 hours. It was a level 3 power failure, the Power Corporation's highest level of emergency. The culprit was the community's out-of-date diesel generators. There is a solution to the risky state of affairs at the Whati power station: it is to get rid of those old generators and hook up Whati to the Snare hydro grid. Mr. Speaker, the department simply is not doing that.

There is a sad irony in all of this. Get this, Mr. Speaker: Whati is the closest community in the entire territory to the Snare hydro complex. It is right around the corner, a mere 40 kilometres away. Yellowknife, on the other hand, which is on the Snare hydro grid, is four times the distance, and they are on the system.

Mr. Speaker, the Minister has offered to replace the worst of Whati's three ailing diesel generators. According to my people of Whati, that is not good enough. The Whati people are starting to make a lot of noise about this. There needs to be preventative measures. We need to prevent these types of events from happening in the future. Just consider if it was minus 50 or minus 60. Good thing it was minus 15 and minus 20 at that time. Mr. Speaker, at the appropriate time today, I will be asking the Minister of Infrastructure questions on this particular very important matter to my constituents. Masi.