Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I live on a street in Yellowknife that's become locally famous for festive Christmas lights displays. At the height of December, you'd be filled with Christmas cheer driving by all the twinkling lights, and many folks cheerfully kept them up through the beginning of January, at least until the December power bills showed up. Just like that, Mr. Speaker, Christmas was over on 57th Street, and the reality of our rising cost of living landed with a dull thud, like a sack of coal.
Residents are struggling to make ends meet and are asking what we can do to help. Power rates in the NWT are the highest in the country so are naturally top of mind in this conversation.
Mr. Speaker, I intended to speak mostly about our power rates today, but by strange coincidence we also suffered a long mid-winter power outage last night which has brought the challenges our system is facing to the top of mind for an even more troubling reason. Our infrastructure is aging and desperately in need of upgrades, and our Minister has been working tirelessly on moving the Taltson hydro expansion forward, but I wonder if we've been neglecting some more basic actions we could take to stabilize our system in the near term. Some ideas which have been floated to me are expanding the capacity of the Bluefish reservoir, expand uptake of renewables, do a policy review on rate regulation, switch from a public utilities board to a rate review council, or make changes to the Public Utilities Act for regulatory efficiency, to name a few.
What I want to emphasize is we should approach this issue with urgency and creativity and not let smaller solutions fall by the wayside as we strive for a panacea.
Mr. Speaker, the recent announcement of military investment in our communities is a major opportunity to turn our power narrative around. The military are going to want to ensure there's reliable power available and have been clear with us they want to move these projects forward in a way that benefits our communities and doesn't add burden to our strained systems. I have to give the Minister credit, Mr. Speaker. When we were going back and forth on housing funding last budget, she said to me we really need to be focusing on our aging power infrastructure as well. I agree. So let's get to work. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.