Don Stewart

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I think the initial plan is they will be in three different locations. Some will be in the gallery building. There was already a shared service unit for Lands, ENR, and ITI, and we will use the space that was there. Some will be in the Laing Buildings, where the office of the CIO was. There may be some swapping out of space. Then the third sort of focal point will be in Northwest Tower, what I affectionately call "the green building." There is some space that we were able to get through infrastructure for a third spot there. Obviously, ideally, we would like to have...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, this is the information systems shared services unit, so this is the initiative that we have talked to the committee about, of basically consolidating all of the resources from across government into one unit to do information systems development. Really, the genesis of that was a review that was done and a recognition that there is an awful lot of this work being done in government; often it was not being coordinated particularly well, and you had different departments doing different things, and that led to duplication and those sorts of things. The other thing...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. In terms of the Hydro Corporation and their short-term debt, there were some estimates built-in, and they were quite generous in terms of things that they might have to borrow for. There are some resource-related projects that they've responded to RFPs to provide power there, that they would have to borrow to have the generation available for that. They have some other things out there that they may have to borrow some money on. That was all built-in. Not all of those may necessarily happen, but we wanted to make sure they had the room to be able to do that.

In terms of the...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I am not sure that I know all of the details of exactly what they would get access to. I know that there have been cases where they have been provided things like test scores and those sorts of things, but I don't know the level that they go down to. We could look into that and get back to the Member specifically around the panel's notes and those sorts of things, but I think it is mostly about scoring and that sort of stuff that they would get.

The other thing that we do, and this is outside the appeal process, is that, on every competition for Northerners, if somebody is...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I'll deal with the first line here on short-term debts. Our short-term debt is essentially our cash shortfall, if you like. The main estimates project that, if the short-term debt is going to go from $318 million up to $325 million during the year, with short-term debt, you can imagine a scenario where, for example, if we had a very bad fire season and our supplementary appropriations were much greater than we expected to be. So what this is doing is saying, let's put in a contingency amount so what this Appropriation Act is saying is that, if you need to borrow on short...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Probably the two biggest drivers for small business that will be provided offsets is 100 percent of the heating fuel carbon tax is being rebated back to the user, whether it is a resident or it is a small business, and then electricity generation, as well. We are not charging carbon tax on electricity generation using diesel fuel. There are also other programs that are being looked at under the Low Carbon Economy Fund, I believe, that will help businesses in terms of some of the things that they may want to do to help reduce their consumption. I know that that work is...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. In the initial design of the program, the assumption was that there were certain things that were going to be more heavily impacted, that would hit families more than it would hit, necessarily, people without children. The decision was made to make it slightly larger for children than it would be for adults, and therefore families would end up, on a per-person basis, with a little higher amounts. That was the original design that was done around the carbon tax cost-of-living offset. Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So, the amounts around implementation that are being charged against the revolving fund are specific to activities around sales and distribution. So, for example, the e-commerce platform that was developed to sell cannabis online will be dealt with through the revolving fund. These ones are broader-type support for issues that are really future policy work in some cases, like the edibles as they come on, as well the overall coordination of activities, as the Member is probably aware. There are other departments that are also engaged in activities related to cannabis in...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. There are three positions related to this activity. Two of them are related to the implementation of cannabis sales and distribution, so they will be involved in the review of any vendor applications that we get to open additional locations; they will also be involved in the overall corporate cannabis-related activities; and then, thirdly, to support the future policy changes. The federal government has indicated that there will be some decisions made around things like edibles, for example, within the year, and that will require some additional policy work.

The second...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. As well as a supplementary reserve for infrastructure, we also have one for operations funding, and then there is an estimate that goes into the Main Estimates on how much will be lapsed by departments over the year. As part of the public accounts process, all of that is reconciled, and we will know whether we end up with a different cash position than what was forecast at the time of the main estimates. It is really after the end of the fiscal year, and we get a final accounting of all three of those pots that we will be able to know what the impact would be overall on the...