Terry Halifax
Northern News Services

Fort Simpson (Aug 04/00) - About 25 Fort Simpson residents met last week with NWT Power Corporation representatives to find out what the company had to offer the community in exchange for a franchise agreement.

While residents were hoping for much the same offer NTPC presented to Hay River, many walked away disappointed at the July 26 meeting.

Following NTPC's presentation, Simpson resident and businessowner Pat Rowe got the impression the Power Corp. was offering "just more of the same."

"What you've shown us here isn't anything new to what is being done right now," Rowe said. "It says you're going to get more involved with the community. You're going to send out more pamphlets; well that's great -- but what, hard and fast, as a business, are you going to be doing for the village of Fort Simpson?"

NTPC president Leon Courneya said Simpson currently enjoys a 99.97 per cent power reliability, pays no franchise fee, and future upgrades will allow for electronic billing and NTPC promises to donate old computers for schools.

While in the Hay River proposal, NTPC offered a million kilowatts of free power to attract new business to the community, Courneya said that just isn't possible here.

"We can do that because Hay River is on the Talston Hydro system which has excess power," Courneya said. "We can't offer that in Fort Simpson because it is a diesel community."

Division costs

Simpson Mayor Norm Prevost had high praise for the community involvement of the NTPC employees, but asked what effect the split with Nunavut would have on rates in Fort Simpson.

"NTPC has publicly predicted a 10 per cent rate increase to pay for the impact of division. What impact will that have on Fort Simpson specifically?" Prevost said.

Courneya said they hope to recover five per cent of the loss by sub-contracting work to Nunavut and they are hoping the Hay River franchise could further cushion the loss.

He added executive positions have been cut at the head office since 1995, when they had a chairman functioning as CEO, a president, two vice-presidents and 11 directors.

"Now, we have a president functioning as CEO, two VPs, we're down to five directors and after division there will be no VPs and five directors," he said.

Prevost asked the panel why the taxpayers should pay for a meeting to promote the power corporation.

"How much will the people of Fort Simpson have to pay for the Northwest Territories Power Corporation to host this public meeting, all the other P.R. that's been done over the past three months and all the ads that have been placed in the Deh Cho Drum,"

The panel would not say what the budget was for the Fort Simpson campaign.

"Do we have an unlimited budget?" Courneya asked and answered, "No we don't."

Mayor leaves meeting

When the mayor tried to comment further, the panel asked him to stick to questions rather than comments. The mayor left the meeting.

"I left because they wouldn't let me say anymore," Prevost said later. "Even the first time I spoke they didn't want me making comments, just asking questions."

"The next time, they tried to get Mike (Chemerys) to shut the mic off," he laughed. "When you asked the question, not one number ever came out of them."

Village Coun. Duncan Canvin said the meeting never offered any information the people didn't already have.

"I think it was pretty much the same old, same old," Canvin said, adding that if the corporation wants to survive it will have to become more locally owned and operated.

"Whether they have to tear the beast up and divey it up into little parts, but there certainly needs to be something done."