Don Stewart

Thanks, Mr. Chair. The Member is right. So the first column would be the estimated balance that will be in place at the end of this fiscal year, and then the second one is the balance for the next fiscal year, so by March 31, 2019. Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. As the Member noted, we did make the changes and increased the eligibility for the NWT Child Benefit. So far, since those changes have been made, there has been an average of 2,200 or so, approximately 2,200, families receiving that benefit. Prior to that, there were about 1,493 families, so there are about 700 more families who are now receiving that benefit than were previously. Obviously there would be costs with increasing the threshold level that would have to be considered along with other priorities, but there has been a significant expansion in terms of the number of...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. As the Member pointed out around the travel and the audits, we certainly have had several discussions with CRA about that. I am sure the Member is aware that they have proposed a solution, but it will take some time to implement that. We have followed up with them to see if there are things that we could expedite to move those changes or other options around some of the suggestions that have been made to maybe make that an easier process, but it is a federal program. We will continue to push, but, at the end of the day, the federal government will have to decide what they...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. In terms of enforcement, what the Liquor Enforcement group does is really around license holders. So establishments, special operating permits, those sorts of things. In the case of cannabis, that's going to be sold through our liquor stores at this point, so the liquor enforcement folks do not do inspections there. There will be other enforcement elements in terms of the public and, you know, the amount of cannabis that you may be able to have in your possession. That really will be the Department of Justice's function. Liquor enforcement is really around, again, those...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. As the Member well knows, this has been a file that is moving pretty rapidly, so we are working on that now. The intention is that it would be distributed through the liquor commission. It will become another product of the liquor commission, similar to any other product, and so it would be part of that revolving fund.

Then, in terms of the taxation side, we will record the taxation that is outside of just the markups and those sorts of things as part of the main estimates, it would be through the Department of Finance. It is not just, as the Member has alluded to, about the...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. It is a real challenge for us because we have a couple of factors that are at play here. One is that we do not have that many large filers in terms of the system, so the behaviour of any one of them in terms of a circumstance where they may be able to do more write-offs can have quite an impact. The other issue is that corporations can go back and re-file for previous years, so there are always adjustments that are taking place, as well, and then, because we would have already received that money from the federal government, then they are clawing that back from us, for lack...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. To address the issue that the Member has spoken of, one of the things we are doing is we are delivering more of our training programs with an online option to it. So recently, for example, we launched a fairly major set of technical training that is now available online, so anybody could take it at their desk and return back to the point in which they left off if work takes over, and those sorts of things.

That's not going to work in every case, but it does give another option available to staff. We do not have the data here for the types of training by position, but one the...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I think, typically, what the audits end up finding is there are some recordkeeping issues sometimes with folks or that they misclassified. In the case of the fuel type, they may have misclassified some fuel types, but, generally speaking, I think, with the reality of the audits, people know that we are coming, and they tend to keep pretty good records for us.

You always find a little something that they can improve on administratively and those sorts of things, but I do not think that it would be fair to say that there is a pattern of an area where people are being...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So the proposed investment of $400,000 is related to labour relations capacity, and specifically related to collective bargaining and compensation analysis. So we currently have one position that provides all of the research and analytical support for bargaining and compensation. We are starting to deal with a more complex environment in terms of some of the provincial governments and how they approach the compensation policy, those sorts of things.

We are moving towards selfgovernment, and, as Indigenous governments draw down jurisdiction or enter into service delivery...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I do not have anything too specific, but I am sure the Member was aware of all of the various proposals that the federal government put forward. I think there were things around incomesplitting and being able to have some of the expenses from your business written off for family members and those sorts of things.

Not all of those changes came through, but, when they were announced as possible changes, I think what happened was that people were noting that those were coming and did some steps to structure themselves a little bit differently.

We can see if the federal...