Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, again echoing what the Premier said already, telecommunications is a known challenge across highways all across the Northwest Territories, across Canada. One of the roles that the Department of Finance has is as the liaison point or an advocacy point with the CRTC. I can say the CRTC recently with their representative member for the region was in the Northwest Territories, and we had an opportunity to meet, and finding a better path for telecommunications was one of the topics on that agenda. One of the challenges we've had -- O and M funding for cell communications towers, just between here and Behchoko, was over $500,000 per year back in 2021. That has no doubt gone up and would no doubt, of course, be significantly higher if we were to try to cover all of the highways across the North. That said, the federal government does have some pots of funding, which to this point did not apply to telecommunications. They were only available for fibre and for internet communications. We are advocating to see some change in that regard, if there can be a bigger pot of larger funding from which -- whether it's GNWT or Indigenous governments or regional governments could apply, we might be able to make some traction on this. Thank you.
Caroline Wawzonek on Question 173-20(1): Lack of Cellular Phone Service along Northwest Territories Highways
In the Legislative Assembly on May 24th, 2024. See this statement in context.
Question 173-20(1): Lack of Cellular Phone Service along Northwest Territories Highways
Oral Questions
May 24th, 2024
Page 460
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