Thank you, Mr. Speaker -- Mr. Substitute Speaker. Okay, first, I want to acknowledge that definitely this is a crisis. When people in Norman Wells are in danger of losing their housing because they can't afford to heat it this winter, we already have enough of a homelessness crisis and a housing crisis in this territory. We certainly cannot afford to make it any worse. But to avoid repetition, I just will try to focus on some points that haven't been mentioned yet by my colleagues.

So there are two different issues here. First is the issue of how we provide immediate relief to residents and businesses that are based in Norman Wells; and second, what is the longer-term solution going forward so we assure that we don't get ourselves into this situation again. I would argue that the two issues are actually linked because the way we choose to respond now to the immediate crisis will set precedents that do impact our longer-term options impasse. And I want to emphasize this is not about blame, but we need to understand how we got into this situation before we can figure out how to get out of it and how to avoid repeating this crisis.

So while the GNWT was planning ahead for projected low water levels and was trucking in fuel to all the other Sahtu communities over last year's winter road, Imperial Oil, the main fuel supplier to Norman Wells, apparently did not have the same incentive to plan ahead. Undoubtedly, they incurred significant extra costs by flying in fuel but we don't actually know, we can't verify, we don't have a regulatory mechanism, to help us know exactly what those extra costs were and to ensure that price increases are kept to the bare minimum rather than adding to Imperial Oil's profits. And we know there's a long history of large corporations that are in monopoly positions taking the opportunity during crisis situations to jack up prices and not lower them again. We saw that during the COVID crisis with grocery stores significantly raising food prices, and they have not gone back down. And even our federal government still has not been able to hold them accountable for those increased prices.

So the problem that I see with cutting a cheque to Imperial Oil is that we have no way to guarantee that they still won't unfairly raise prices from what they were previously while pocketing some of the government's subsidy as profit. They could cite all sorts of reasons that they need to raise their prices at any time, such as inflation, anything else, and how would we know if those reasons are valid? So I fear that we wouldn't have any recourse if the prices still go up even after full government subsidies to any increases that we expect at this point. And if we signal to a private company that's in a monopoly position that this government has bottomless pockets to subsidize whatever is necessary in terms of fuel costs, we are putting everyone in a very dangerous situation. So whatever we do, we need to set clear limits on the subsidies we can provide to Norman Wells.

In terms of the longer term solutions going forward, as I indicated earlier in my Member's statement, we do have opportunities to more ambitiously support, first, energy efficiency and conservation measures, as well as the transition to renewable fuel such as the wood stoves and pellet stoves that could help end the community's dependence on oil and diesel. And to prevent the situation from occurring again, I would propose that the GNWT could, and perhaps should, take over fuel services for Norman Wells and any other community where there is a fuel monopoly. The GNWT fuel services division already provides fuel to communities where there is no private market, where no private suppliers would step in and offer that fuel. I would argue that there's also no private market in communities where there is a monopoly. Because a monopoly is not a market. So when it comes to a product such as heating fuel that is needed to meet people's basic needs, it's such an essential product, the GNWT cannot continue to be put in the position of needing to bail out a huge multinational corporation that is in a monopoly position and controls people's ability to meet their basic needs simply, perhaps, because that company has failed to plan ahead and that has such a huge impact on the opportunity and its ability to meet its basic needs.

So I don't in this moment have all the solutions to this crisis and certainly we didn't have much notice of this particular debate, but those are the thoughts that I wanted to offer by way of caution as we move forward and try to figure out a way out of this crisis. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.