Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as most landlords, and we did the -- like, I think throughout the Northwest Territories already have it in their leases that there is no smoking in their units. Housing is changing their policy to create that now. What we'll do as health is we'll continue to, you know, monitor what is going on in those units that are multi-units. We'll work with housing. I think that is the biggest thing that we will be able to do is to see moving forward in the future if there's more work that will need to be done through legislation. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Minister of Health and Social Services. Oral questions. Member from Inuvik Boot Lake.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, given the Member from Nunakput's statement today and given the fact that certainly my community in Inuvik is on the Mackenzie River, we've often had flooding, not as serious as what has happened up there obviously, but considering the community experienced a post-cyclonic storm surge on August 30th, I have a question for the Minister of MACA, Mr. Speaker.

Can the Minister of MACA confirm, has the community been offered or did they receive any financial assistance from the government to help the community remove the debris and certainly get the roads back into working order? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Member from Inuvik Boot Lake. Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The GNWT has not offered the community any disaster assistance arrangement to rebuild any of the roads or remove any driftwood or debris as the disaster assistance policy has not been applied to this event with the information that MACA had received. After our most recent meeting, MACA's still assessing the situation to understand the full scope of damage.

Mr. Speaker, no additional funding has been provided to the hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk for the clean-up or the road repair from the department. The hamlet does not have to apply for funding or identify specific projects to receive community government funding. Community government funding is distributed evenly and equitably through all the communities, and it's up to the hamlets and the communities to decide how they spend it. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I understand that MACA did council the community to -- not to declare a state of emergency but to apply through the NWTAC through their insurance program to help build roads and remove the debris. Can the Minister -- I wonder if the Minister is aware how successful they were in receiving that insurance funding from NWTAC. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Declaring a local state of emergency or not declaring a local state of emergency doesn't always provide access to disaster assistance policy. It all depends on the type of emergency and the scale of the emergency.

In regards to the hamlet of Tuk, accessing the insurance, the Member would have to contact the hamlet to get that information as it's through NorCIP with NWTAC. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs. Final supplementary. Member from Inuvik Boot Lake.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I know the community of Tuktoyaktuk, similar to other communities in my region, are already struggling with infrastructure. I know the community of Tuktoyaktuk are now paying down the debt for their new water treatment plant they've had, they've built there, and they've also -- there's a major shore erosion project going on up there, Mr. Speaker. So then I guess, you know, is the Minister suggesting that the community do rollbacks? I mean, is it something that -- I mean, obviously, we have limited funds in municipalities and in hamlets in our region. How does the Minister then feel that the community can pay for this if the existing funds simply isn't there? Thank you.

Again, Mr. Speaker, you know, municipal and community affairs applies all the funding through the communities and applies -- or distributes it equally through all the communities. The hamlet does not have any debt with the new treatment plant that they put through as it was part of their community planning. The plant's been operational since the commissioning last summer. So a little bit of information in regards to the cost, so total cost of the plant was estimated to be about $4.9 million. It was about $4.7 million. You know, the hamlet funded this by their community funding. So any of the community funding that they received could be used any -- essentially anywhere they want when it comes down to some of this stuff. Tuk still has about $2.8 million in CCFB holdbacks that the GNWT can pay if they receive their reporting. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs. Oral questions. Member from Range Lake.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I said in my Member's statement, Northerners are sick of paying for power bills that are the highest in the country, and it's not just households; it's businesses as well. I've received letters from businesses in my riding that are complaining about the power failures in particular, not only the costs that results in tens of thousands of dollars annually in equipment damage, lost sales, and reputational damage. They want the Minister responsible for NTPC to answer this question: Why has reliability failed to improve, and in fact has gotten worse over time, despite repeated funding from this government into the power system? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Member from Range Lake. Minister responsible for NTPC.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There's a couple different types of funding that we see here frequently, one of which is the subsidies that we provide through territorial power support programs and also direct subsidies on the water events, for example, to keep affordability where it is. But the other type of investment, Mr. Speaker, is in the infrastructure component and in this case, Mr. Speaker, we have systems that were built in the '60s and '70s that have not been brought up to speed that we're now having to catch up on and in the meantime we do wind up with isolated grids here in the north, an isolated grid down in the south, and isolated community grids all around the Northwest Territories. So that creates a problem for reliability, it creates a lack of redundancy, and it creates a lot of catch-up for the people of the Northwest Territories. So it's going to certainly take quite a lot of effort and quite a lot of time to catch up on a system that is this old. And certainly the money that we put into the subsidies to maintain affordability, that doesn't help us catch up where we need to be. So this should be an issue that is front and centre. It's one that I raise frequently with the federal government. We need to be brought up to speed with where the rest of Canada is, and that certainly remains a commitment of mine and of this government to continue to do that, to continue to advocate for that, and make sure that it's not being done on the backs of our residents and our consumers alone. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm pleased that the Minister is aware of what -- the diagnosis of the problem; what we need is the solution. These businesses also want to know what specific infrastructure upgrades are planned to prevent on going surges and blackouts. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there are different things planned for different communities and different regions, as I said. And as we all know, we have a number of isolated grids across the system. So I can say one of the things that they've been working on in the Taltson zone, for example, is to make sure following -- and actually this is true, really, across the territories right now is that following a lot of the wildfires, just by way of one example, it creates a situation where there's a lot more risk to the power lines, to the different power systems, where there is a lot more deadfall that can impact on power line systems. And so there's a lot of effort going in to making sure that they're doing the work to clear areas and to make sure that the areas that would be at risk as a result of the wildfires are being maintained so that the poles and the wires aren't likely to be at risk. Beyond that, Mr. Speaker, there's a lot of work happening to try to -- in a broad sense, to connect our grids, to create transmission connections, and to bring a greater redundancy to our system. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Minister responsible for NTPC. Final supplementary. Member from Range Lake.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Well, while we're waiting for those infrastructure improvements, you know, we've seen businesses that have had to close because of blackouts and power equipment failures that have led to fires. I have a constituent who's out of home because of that. We have the community of Fort Smith that started court proceedings to recoup money. So what does the Minister suggest for people who are financially impacted by these outages; what recourse do they have? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this is part of what gets approved by the public utilities board are the term and conditions of sale both for the generation component that tends to be exclusively done by the Northwest Territories Power Corporation as well as the distribution that is done both by NTPC as well as Naka Power, and regulated utilities in Canada are not permitted to reimburse customers for damages. That is one of the standard situations that everyone in Canada does find themselves at. Regulated utilities in Canada are only allowed to charge customers for the costs to operate their system, which is then what unfortunately leads to folks who have experienced extreme or other kinds of claims outside of that process. But, again, it's the one that is -- it's one that is regulated all across Canada and for us by the public utilities board. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Minister responsible for NTPC. Oral questions. Member from the Deh Cho.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Given the circumstances, can the Minister of housing confirm that installation of a backup power generator would be considered an eligible expense within Housing NWT's programs for the seniors' home in Fort Providence? Thank you.

Minister of Housing NWT.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you to the Member for the question. I think a conversation with district staff at this point and looking at the facility itself to see if a backup power generator is warranted. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you. Will the Minister support community-led proposals to install backup generators in the seniors' independent living home, and can NWT Housing provide technical and/or financial assistance to help communities develop these potential solutions? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.