Bob Bromley

The Minister has said that there may be compliance issues at play in the collection of the payroll tax and that he was considering having the program review office take a look at it with that in mind. Thank you.

How would that vary? Just on that, has the department… We obviously need revenue. This government needs revenue; I don’t think anybody questions that. Payroll tax, based on information provided by the Minister, is providing significant funds, some of which we lose through this cost of living tax credit, but it still leaves significant dollars. I believe it was increased from 1 percent originally to 2 percent. Given our situation where we have so many migrant workers who live somewhere else and work here and take their dollars away so that there are very few benefits, this is the only...

I didn’t hear a mandate there. I hope we get it figured out in the next 32 days. Mr. Speaker, ITI obviously doesn’t have the internal capacity to suddenly become the oil and gas regulator, so we have to contract out services, as the Minister mentioned, for example, from the NEB or another province. We could have stuck with the NEB who already knows the NWT very well or gone with the British Columbia commission, as the Yukon has chosen to do, but we chose to use the services of the Alberta Oil and Gas Regulator.

Given their record of treating the NWT as a convenient dumping ground for everything...

Mr. Chair, the other function I see this office has is providing financial analysis, advice and interpretation, internal auditing and so on. The issue has been raised a number of times that there are compliance issues. It may be at play in collecting the payroll tax. I wonder if the Minister could tell me what those compliance issues are that the Minister has considered asking the program review office to look at. Thank you.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I’m just wondering: with respect to the cost of living tax credit, is that related to the payroll tax and, if so, how and do they work together? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Our children are our future. The way we care for them in their earliest years will have impacts that will last for the rest of their lives.

Education, Culture and Employment is proposing implementation of junior kindergarten, taught by elementary school teachers who will be encouraged to take course work in early childhood education. But the literature on early childhood education emphatically demonstrates that the success of junior kindergarten depends upon high quality programs delivered by fully trained early childhood education workers.

Kerry McCuaig, Fellow at the...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will be supporting the motion too. My hope would be that as we spend the money that it is going to cost to do this and it is obviously well worth it and if it is not working in the consensus government context, I would urge the Cabinet to be sure to include Regular Members in the steering committee that guides the review or the two people that guide the review.

I will be supporting the motion. Thank you.

Thank you for that information. Just to be accurate here, it’s been 7 percent per year for the last three years and another 5 percent on top this year. The question was what are we now doing with the dollars that we’ve been spending. Committee has made suggestions that those dollars should be going into reducing costs of living especially through energy costs in the NWT in the past. What are we doing with the difference between the $15 million and $3 million this year, and the $9 million, $9.5 million last year and the $3 million this year?

Mr. Chair, I’m just about out of time; I have to get back on the list here. I’m hearing from professionals that there are concerns that there are programs already in place for four-year-olds’ special needs type situations. Given the lack of investment in these added responsibilities in large centres like Yellowknife will, in fact, cause the resources to be attracted away from these important special needs four-year-old programs such as the Four Plus program at Weledeh school. I’m just telling the Minister. At this point, I’m hoping that he will be very alert to that. I hope he is recognizing...

Thanks for that information. I assume that means we don’t know what the cost of the project is, the total cost of the project. The Minister mentioned we’ve been working on this since the 16th. I don’t see any expenses listed in previous years, but perhaps we’ve already spent $10 million thinking about this project. So I’ll look forward to discussing the financial side of things on this project in committee I guess.

I see an interest expense listed of $4.8 million down from $5 million last year and it doesn’t say what that’s for. Probably I’m supposed to know, but I don’t. Thank you.