Floyd Roland

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, joining me today are the acting deputy minister of Public Works and Services, Mr. Mike Aumond; the deputy minister of Finance, Ms. Margaret Melhorn; and, as well, we have from Justice, Ms. Patricia Gall.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I guess a simple example would be if we have this in place and know that a one cent per litre increase in the cost of a product would have an overall impact of $250,000 for us, we would have to transfer that increased cost on to the customer in the community. So if we were able to buy in the future, and if there was a savings of five cents or even 10 cents, that would save us passing that kind of increase on to the customers in the communities. Usually the adjustments would be in the few cent range. But as we found out this last cycle we went through re...

I am pleased to introduce Bill 13, An Act to Amend the Financial Administration Act. This bill was introduced to allow the government and, more specifically, the petroleum products revolving fund, to use commercial financial instruments, such as fuel swap transactions, when prudent, to limit the impact of movements in fuel prices.

The petroleum productions division of the Department of Public Works and Services administers the petroleum products revolving fund under the authority of the Revolving Funds Act and the Financial Administration Act. PPD provides fuel sales, dispensing and delivery...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I don’t see it being a problem sharing that with Members when the regulations are ready to be put in place. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the issues with community funding that we have identified have been put in trust, the agreements are signed and arrangements are made. Our arrangements where we need to match have been identified. What we have included for community infrastructure and budgets, the federal gas tax agreements, those are agreed to, signed off, and will be flowing. So those are straightforward in those areas. If there are areas that we have to match again, it’s identified within the appropriate Ministers' budgets and we are confident in those areas. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, this bill does not change the way we do operations. All this bill allows us is the purchasing of fuel. Not on the sales and dispensing of fuel. This only deals with how we would purchase fuel from the market. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, on a number of fronts, we are going to be approaching a new government. The Premier, of course, as soon as he is able, will be getting a meeting with Prime Minister-designate Harper. Myself, when we hear who the Finance Minister will be, will be trying to get some time with the new Minister of Finance. The Minister of Housing will do the same. We would employ much of the same strategies we have with previous governments about specific roles and the commitments made out there. We’ve already highlighted the areas that we feel are most critical on the list...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, this proposal and the amendment before the Members are not going to change the way we do business in communities on a day-to-day process. What it will give us is, at the time we want to purchase fuel, if we see a trend going up we can use, for example, an 18-month window. That’s sort of the extreme it would do for how far out we might go to a market and say we want to purchase this amount of fuel at this price. That’s all it would do. It wouldn’t give us how we do our dealings in communities. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, yes, the Member's memory and his comments are accurate about how he felt the decision we were making would have an impact. The impact that we've given, we've highlighted already in October. Now, the difference of our loss of corporate tax falls on two areas. One, the approximate amount of companies shifting where they would pay their taxes; two, probably more significantly, was how companies would refile their corporate income taxes. They have a three-year window where they can write off profits to previous losses so they can reduce the amount of...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, Mr. Chairman, we will be able to track how purchases are done and how effective this may be. We do tracking already on the existing operations we have just in cost of product and so on, and the trend has been an upward one over the years. But for this purpose, yes, we will have to make sure we put in a good tracking system.