Floyd Roland
Statements in Debates
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I don’t have a scenario to present to Members about the actual impacts of litres that were purchased and how much potential savings there are. All I can go towards right now is if we had this tool available when the prices started to go up and if we were able to purchase on the future market, just looking at the percentages that have happened, we’ve had some products go up by almost 50 percent from what the price was. So if we were able to buy just as it were starting to climb, we could have saved a significant amount of dollars. We had some large...
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the bill that’s presented would allow us to deal with the impacts of fuel prices before we get it delivered into the tanks. There is no provision in the act itself to deal with the fluctuating costs throughout the year. The policy that we’ve been directed to fulfill is to recover actual costs of product delivered into those tanks. In some cases, that can work in a positive way for some of the communities because if we can get a price product delivered at a time of year when the prices are somewhat lower and as they increase throughout the year, other...
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the bill that’s before Members will give us some flexibility in how we go and get our fuel. But ultimately what we’re faced with is paying the price of the product when it is delivered in the tanks, and beyond that there is no more flexibility because the policy we have set in place now is that we have to pay for the actual product that is delivered. We’re still not charging for the capital that’s there, the tankage and so on. But for the product delivered, we’re having to recover actual costs. So that’s what the Member’s communities are feeling.
All...
Yes, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, there would be times when we look at the market and the price would either be in a general increase and that would be the time we would look at using this tool to buy fuel or gasoline on future markets, so that if we look at the trend, the trend would show it’s going up. If our re-supply is happening in, say, six months’ time and the price seems to be going up, we can make a decision to buy at that price for that future time to be delivered. At the same time, we could see the trend would either be levelled off or maybe going down, we would say let’s not...
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The particulars that we are working on, the gas tax situation, that is certain. The $4 million that comes from the Northern Strategy trust is certain. The $100 million amount that we were talking about over the next couple of years from federal Housing, Bill C-48, has been through Parliament but it did not make it through Treasury Board. So that is the one that we have highlighted as an issue that we need to get the federal government to make a serious commitment on and see where they are going to go with that. The $100 million is over three years. It’s tied to the...
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.