Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to ask the Minister of NTPC in regards to the power outage in the small communities of Norman Wells and Tuktoyaktuk, and somewhat in Inuvik. Given the weather conditions of the severe unprecedented wind storms that were blowing in the communities, does NTPC have a priority rating scale as to which communities they should be getting into right away because of the power outage in the communities, given that they were all happening at the same time? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister responsible for the Northwest Territories Power Corporation, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have an emergency rating system. The folks on the ground in the communities, in Inuvik for example, make determinations. They talk with the folks in the various communities and then they look at the severity of the situation in each community. The one that is the most critical is the one that we try to get to the fastest and the soonest. If you have a community where there are hundreds of people with no power for a great length of time, that is a critical emergency in the wintertime. So, we work to the utmost, working around the weather, keeping safety in mind, but making sure we get response people on the ground there as soon as possible. Thank you.
The NTPC workers in communities of Norman Wells and Tuk and Inuvik, I certainly appreciate the types of conditions they have to be challenged with in order to get into a community that has a power outage and the emergency rating.
I want to ask the Minister, in regards to the Sahtu region, does the Sahtu region have qualified power linemen that could have fixed the issue in Norman Wells that happened on Sunday? Do we have people in the region who are able to do that work, other than wait for Simpson or Inuvik crews to come in?
We have some personnel on the ground. We have some that we use and we try to look to work with other folks who have some kind of similar capacity.
In terms of do we have any particular linemen, I would have to confirm and get back to the Member on that. Thank you.
I certainly appreciate the Minister getting the information back to me. I want to ask the Minister, is there any type of training in the communities where if we do not have that type of staff in our region, because we have to either wait for Inuvik or Simpson to come in with those qualified linesmen, can there be some thought to start training our people in the region so that they can do the work, other than to fly in people from outside the region?
Power lineman is a very specialized, highly qualified trade where there are electrical skills required but also the ability to work under very significant and extreme circumstances, often on pole trucks, in some cases climbing poles, so it’s not a type of profession that you can just have folks train partially. But I take the Member’s point and concern about having a permanent facility and capacity based in the region, and I’ll be happy to have a discussion with him possibly tomorrow morning, bright and early at breakfast. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.
Geez, thank you, Minister. Mr. Speaker, we certainly understand the type of requirements to be a power lineman. We have one fellow actually from Deline who is an NTPC power man, Mr. Kenny. So we know we can do it in the Sahtu.
I’m asking the Minister to look at these challenges. The Sahtu people are up to the challenges. We want to establish a permanent NTPC presence in the Sahtu region because of these types of situations. Thank God it was warm and it didn’t last very long.
I want to ask the Minister if he’s willing to look at, during the life of this budget, this Assembly, if we can see this type of movement into the next infrastructure budget.
There are 266 days left to the next election. I will commit to the Member to have a fulsome discussion with the chairman and president of the Power Corporation, and I will be able to report back to the Member on the content of the outcome of that discussion. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Member for Hay River North, Mr. Bouchard.
