Kieron Testart

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...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I have nothing further on this only to say that, again, I think it's important we get budgets as accurate or estimates documents as accurate as possible because of the nature of our fiscal responsibility policy and how it impacts our available capital. So that's why, perhaps, in other governments you would see less -- I mean, less questioning around some of these numbers and how they come to the House because they operate differently. But in this case, every time we are -- we have a revised surplus, it means debt. And we saw how quickly our debt hit the limit until we...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yeah, sorry, and I'm not trying to jump the procedural queue on these things. I guess what I was getting at more so is are we budgeting -- is the base budget being calculated on previous fire seasons? And is that -- yeah, let's ask that. So is it like, depending -- so we spent $39 million more next year, so next year are they going to take that into calculation and bring back a forthcoming budget that looks closer to what we paid this year with hopes of going -- I understand that, like, we don't want to over budget for things but given that we have multiple reports...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Although the contents of the bill or the intentions of the bill are not things I'd necessarily oppose, what these things will do to the Public Service Act don't address a fundamental flaw with the legislation, and it is a flaw that creates risk to ongoing Charter or potential Charter challenge related to how the act is structured around collective bargaining. I won't get into detail on this, Mr. Speaker, because I don't want to drag into the House's time, but it's something that the public and the House is well aware of. Until this is addressed, it's like adding a new...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think that response shows one of the problems with our system. I'm going to come back to that at a later day. The Minister talked about the role of the GNWT in ensuring training. The independent after-action board has recommended that ICS training is -- sorry, institutionalize ICS in all GNWT operations because regular exposure to ICS outside of emergency context builds familiarity and improves operational efficiency during a crisis. Why won't this Minister make commitments to incorporate ICS into day-to-day operations, Mr. Speaker?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs has repeatedly referred to the importance of the Incident Command System when questioned on emergency management and public safety. The independent action report makes three separate ICS recommendations, but the GNWT has only fully agreed to implement one of those, for one of those recommendations to mandate and maintain ICS training for elected officials and emergency managers. The Minister is only making that training available to MLAs. Why isn't the Minister ensuring that that training is mandatory for all...

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.

Mr. Speaker, as temperatures drop and nights grow longer, winter is coming. But Northerners aren't afraid of White Walkers or of Undead Dragons. No, they're bracing for power bills they simply cannot afford. My constituents can't remember the last time they caught a break on their energy bills, and with each passing year they're forced to make even harder choices just to keep the lights on. It's no surprise that the cost of electricity is one of the most frequent concerns I hear about as an MLA. Northerners have a right to be frustrated when they are paying the highest power costs in the...

Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you to the Minister for that. So I mean, I don't have the benefit of the substantiations here but neither does the public, I think, at any time. So for this $39.5 million, can the Minister speak to the nature of the funding? Like, is the -- she listed a number of items there that might impact future expenditures, multi-year contracts or contracts related to fire suppression. So what does this $39 million represent in terms of fire suppression activities? Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Similar to my colleague's comments on this line, will the -- it wasn't clear on the last answer. But will the base budget, then, for fire suppression be revised upwards in the main estimates -- in the next main estimates? Thank you.