Caroline Wawzonek

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the energy systems of the Northwest Territories are in dire need of significant nation scale investment. We need the federal government to be paying attention to the situation we find ourselves in. Residents across this territory are facing not only the high cost that they currently pay. That is also significantly subsidized by the GNWT just to keep the power bills of where they are.

Mr. Speaker, we are not alone. The Yukon right now is proposing a 34 percent increase to their power bills. Nunavut pays an even larger subsidy than we do on their power bills...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'm pleased to have a representative from Yellowknife South acting as a page this week. Naya Nichols is a student at St. Pat's, and thank you for your service this week.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following two documents: Supplementary Estimates, Infrastructures Expenditures, No. 1, 2025-2026 and Supplementary Estimates, Operations Expenditures and Borrowing Authorization, No. 1, 2025-2026. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this recently introduced measure was fairly targeted, and it was temporary. This is intended to be for one year only in the face of $300 million in losses to this industry that keeps people employed in the Northwest Territories. But to be clear, Mr. Speaker, what we did was we did not completely wipe out the fact that the mines are going to continue to pay property taxes. They are just paying a bit less. They were, up to this point, other than pipelines, which had the highest mill rate, the mineral resource sector faced the second highest mill rate...

Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following two documents: 2025-2026 Consolidated Budget and 2024-2025 Northwest Territories Power Corporation Amended Capital Budget. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

-- point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we are actually just having begun the budgets dialogues process which gets feedback from residents about areas of particular need or pinch and what we might be able to see in terms of changes to the budget for the upcoming year. At this point, I don't have any preannouncements to make about next year's budget. I can certainly say that I hope people are tuning in and participating in the dialogues process so that we can get a sense of where there maybe some opportunities to improve our processes and peruse the budget for the benefit of all going forward...

Mr. Speaker, I wish to advise the House that the Honourable Member for Hay River North, the Premier, will be absent from the House today to host the western Premiers' conference here in Yellowknife.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I believe that the Member has overstepped the bounds that there's making inferences here about the Minister's intentions and the Minister's process and what the Minister may or may not be doing, imputing negative motives and a motive that's not present. The notion that she's not working with the Member or the Members of this House is -- in my view, it's not fair. That's a mischaracterization. It's not a characterization of work that's happened on this file, that's been described in this House today, and that we have information, all of us, knowing about the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'll try to be brief, Mr. Speaker. I know we were all given some warnings on being so, and I'm probably the worst at that. Well, Mr. Speaker, it's a tricky one. We obviously during COVID saw a number of different types of relief issued in terms of industry specific or sector specific, or aviation sector for example, but also had money that went into the pockets of residents and didn't always find that that was perhaps the best form of providing people the supports that they, in fact, required. So, you know, and then, of course, during evacuation, we were able to bring...