Floyd Roland

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the guidelines for using this instrument would be worked through the Financial Management Board and developed with them to get this in place. So it would be a new set of guidelines for this instrument to work. There’s been some work done on it, but we’d have to get approval through the FMB.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the funding amounts that we have included in the budget that’s going to be before Members identifies money we have accounted for. So legislation has gone through the federal Parliament, as well as Treasury Board. It’s a matter of just getting commitments of how soon will they flow and release some of those funds to us, but for the most part, they are confirmed money. The ones we have highlighted as issues are the large ones, as I have addressed yesterday, in fact. The housing money is something we need a commitment on. The $500 million impact funding is...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, our policy from within government is not to compete with the private sector. If there’s a private sector in the community that delivers fuel, right now we have the process of standing back to see if they’re successful before we would pull out, but there is not privatization initiatives on the books. Of course, the product in the community, it’s for sale. Those that would come and pay the price that we have established, it’s there for them because we would be the only supplier. That’s the way we would continue to operate. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In line with our consensus style of government and being an open and transparent government, gladly I would seek the Members' input on any reduction scenarios that may come up in the future. Hopefully as we're building our position and our case before the new federal government, we will be able to instead be talking about where we invest more dollars, not how we reduce the expenditures we're in. Thank you.

Yes, as well we’ll be reporting to this House as well as to Members. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm glad the Member has raised the issue of consultation again, specifically in highlighting in his Member's statement the fact that I've, in the past, presented our fiscal situation and the strategies we'd have to work with, and how I guess he would put it, has selective memory of what I've stated. For the record, Mr. Speaker, when we've put the case before Members about where our situation was, I've also informed them why our arrangements were the way they were. So just for the record, Mr. Speaker, it wasn't the fact that we would say that we did not care if large...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, there is a potential risk here. For example, if the trend was starting to go up and we decided to buy in future markets a year or two years down the road, thinking that this trend is going up and will stay that way, and we purchased at that time and as it got time to deliver that fuel the price actually went below, we would end up paying the higher price. That’s the risk in this. If the trend suddenly drops off, then we would take the hit on that. If we had this in place…We’ll just use the example of this past summer’s experience. We had a very large and...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, if you look at the process we’re involved with on an annual basis, we’ve now worked with the Power Corporation and are pulling them into this solution where there’s bulk buying with savings for both sides. Initially, just with PPD, the communities we served, it’s in the area of -- and I believe it’s in the budget documents -- $12 million annual sales. As I stated in my comments, a one cent change in price per litre can affect us by $250,000. So on one hand, if we can get this through and be able to buy on a future market and save ourselves two or three...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, this bill will not give us the flexibility of lowering the price if the product isn’t moving. The policy we have in place is that the department has to recover its full cost of fuel delivered. So unless there’s a private sector company that steps into a community and starts delivering fuel, we have to recover the cost of the actual fuel delivered.

What this bill will do for us is give us somewhat more certainty than we have right now in our ability to purchase the fuel. Instead of paying the right rack price, which can jump significantly in short periods...

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.