Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My Member’s statement today was regarding the phone lines being down in Tuktoyaktuk for six days. Was the Minister of telecommunications notified by NorthwesTel regarding the situation in Tuk?
Thank you, Mr. Jacobson. The honourable Minister responsible for Finance, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. While we have some involvement with the telecommunications on the regulatory side, in the normal business operating issues we are not normally involved. So, no, I was not aware and I will have to check with the department to see if they received any correspondence of this particular outage that the Member refers to.
Thank you, Mr. Minister. In regard to the phone lines being down, you know it creates a lot of hardship on families just not talking to their loved ones or even your parents. Is the Minister willing to give his support to the community to make a complaint to NorthwesTel regarding their service?
If the Member would send me enough of the information, I would forward it to the department, through the office of the chief information officer, to see what option we have to, in fact, help them further their concern about filing their concern with NorthwesTel. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I’d really like to see if the department could also do an investigation in regard to what went wrong and what could be provided for better service, not only for this incident but other problems such as this that could happen in the future. Could we get the commitment from the Minister? Thank you.
We have some information that I can share with the Member that we just got though Public Works and other departments. So we can share that with the Member and we can have the discussion about necessary next steps to try to be able to be more responsive to this issue, if that’s possible. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Your final supplementary, Mr. Jacobson.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I look forward to seeing that information that the Minister has. The bottom line, Mr. Speaker, is the safety concerns of the people of Tuk and the people of the Northwest Territories in the remote communities if something like this was to happen. I know we can’t control the weather, but we had three days prior to the blizzard hitting the community of Tuk and the response to the community for the phone line system. Mr. Speaker, I mean, we have to hold NorthwesTel accountable in regard to their action in the service business. We need to get NorthwesTel to come and meet with the community. Is the Minister willing to help me to ask NorthwesTel to come meet with the leadership of the community of Tuktoyaktuk? Thank you.
I understand that long distance service has been impacted but local service and cell phone service is still available. But, yes, I would be happy to talk to the Member. We’ll make sure he gets this information and we can help him forward his concerns to NorthwesTel. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Kam Lake, Mr. Ramsay.
