Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my Member's statement I spoke about the lack of cell phone coverage across the NWT highway system and it being a safety concern for residents. Can the Premier, who is also the Minister of Justice, tell us whether he considers this issue to be a public safety concern? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member from Deh Cho. Mr. Premier.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think that it's clearly a public safety concern. If you need to contact someone because of an accident or because of an incident or because you see a wildfire that you want to report and there's no cell service, then that's an issue. And it's recognized as an issue not just here in the territory but really across Canada, because if you look at a map of cell coverage of Canada most of it is empty. Most rural areas do not have highway cell coverage, so it is a public safety issue that is known across Canada. Thank you.
Thank you, and thank you to the Premier for that. Mr. Speaker, can the Premier tell us if there are any plans within the life of the 20th Assembly to improve the telecommunications capabilities within the NWT highway system? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And this is actually something that's within the Department of Finance, and the Minister of Finance has answered this question many times before. So I would like to defer to her. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Premier. Minister of Finance.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, again echoing what the Premier said already, telecommunications is a known challenge across highways all across the Northwest Territories, across Canada. One of the roles that the Department of Finance has is as the liaison point or an advocacy point with the CRTC. I can say the CRTC recently with their representative member for the region was in the Northwest Territories, and we had an opportunity to meet, and finding a better path for telecommunications was one of the topics on that agenda. One of the challenges we've had O and M funding for cell communications towers, just between here and Behchoko, was over $500,000 per year back in 2021. That has no doubt gone up and would no doubt, of course, be significantly higher if we were to try to cover all of the highways across the North. That said, the federal government does have some pots of funding, which to this point did not apply to telecommunications. They were only available for fibre and for internet communications. We are advocating to see some change in that regard, if there can be a bigger pot of larger funding from which whether it's GNWT or Indigenous governments or regional governments could apply, we might be able to make some traction on this. Thank you.
Thank you, and thank you to the Minister of Finance for that. Mr. Speaker, will the Premier commit to work with Cabinet, the private sector, and the federal government to finding solutions to improve cell service on our NWT highways? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Again, I'd like to send that to the Minister of Finance. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And, Mr. Speaker, at the risk of it, I think I've probably already given away a bit of the answer, and the answer is yes, we will continue to do that work. There are there is some interest in the telecommunications space in the Northwest Territories on this but, really, again, there's not a private market that would support having this kind of service in the North. The market is just too small. We will really be looking to the federal government on this one and, again, really partnering likely with regional governments on whose lands or in whose regions these impacts would be most felt. So, you know, happy to go forward and continue to have that, but we are going to, first step, want to continue to advocate that the funding pots available, through ISED or otherwise at the federal government level, can actually apply to telecommunications and so that they can see improvements in this space. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister of Finance. Final supplementary. Member from Deh Cho.
This question I have is for the Minister of MACA from my okay.
I could put you on the list for the next. Thank you. Oral questions. Member from Monfwi.
