Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as I said earlier in the day, my constituents are very frustrated with the high cost of power in the Northwest Territories. We have a limited rate base, and we keep squeezing them, and there's nowhere else to charge. So does the Minister have some concrete policy proposals, infrastructure investments, or other forms of change that we can bring to our power system to give Northerners some relief because they're tired of paying these bills, and it's driving people out of their homes as I said. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member from Range Lake. Minister of NTPC.
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 to keep their bills lower for residents.
That doesn't solve the problem, Mr. Speaker. This is a national scale problem. We're not on the North American energy grid. We're on our own. We have almost 20 some different individual micro grids, Mr. Speaker, and so we need the federal government to look at us, to look at projects like Taltson that will start to link our systems, that will look at some of the micro hydro projects that are being examined by Indigenous governments on their lands and, frankly, to consider whether or not there's some other pilot projects that are happening elsewhere in Canada that need to happen in the North so that they're regulated for the northern climate, northern context, and can be brought online to actually fundamentally change the systems that we're in. That's how we're going to get this problem solved. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Well, my honourable friend from Yellowknife Centre talked about the challenge to the Taltson project and perhaps the optimism around it that might not be realized, and certainly, these are large scale infrastructures. So she said with projects that will take time and investment to pull off and, of course, federal investment. Hopefully, our northern Prime Minister understands that. Nunavut pays more in subsidies. Will the Minister increase the power rate subsidies to give Northerners a break? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we are still currently in this process of a general rate application that was required by the public utilities board, so at this point we are waiting to see what the public utilities board comes back with.
We are also then very much eagerly anticipating the response of the public utilities board to the 13 different policy proposals that we have put forward as a government to look at ways to change and improve the overall structure and system of the GNWT or of the Northwest Territories power systems, and that includes looking at things like power systems plannings and how people might be able to have net metering changes and communities can enter into independent power producer arrangements. Those are all things that will start to change the way that we are operating. But, again, at the moment I'm waiting on the public utilities board, and I am sure they are diligently doing their work. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister responsible for NTPC. Final supplementary. Member from Range Lake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, some of -- the net metering policy is long overdue, so I hope the board agrees with the Minister because we could have had some cheaper renewables a long time ago if we had a more favourable rate like they have in Yukon. So we're in 2025, Mr. Speaker. We have AI technology. We have new technologies. There's lots of companies out there who are promising to save this government money by implementing some new systems, some new RFPs.
Will the Minister look to the many, many options out there of AI and new -- emerging technology companies that can provide cheaper power with our current systems. They can optimize our systems to lower the costs which will result in lower rates for Northerners. So will the Minister commit to looking to those solutions? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, always happy to look at other options. There is a wealth of change happening in the energy space. Everything from AI managed battery technology that can look to optimize the battery systems and to the actual management of a diesel -- even a diesel generator, all the way over to micro hydro or micro nuclear which is just really tiny little facilities, not on a scale that we were -- would have before seen that are still only at a piloting stage.
So the short answer is yes, Mr. Speaker, and the longer answer is we need to make sure that whatever which of these solutions we choose is one that's properly geared to the Northwest Territories, to the Arctic, and that's where we need the federal government to be our partners because getting technology brought up to speed for the North doesn't -- isn't always something that's on their radar. It needs to be on their radar too. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister responsible for NTPC. Oral questions. Member from Monfwi.
