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.
