Floyd Roland

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there are a number of practices put in place about how we procure supplies or lease office space in communities. We put out a public request for proposals or a tender on facilities and rate them through the proposals that are received. The others would be in the communities themselves where we know there isn’t adequate space available; if there was only one supplier available, we would go directly to that supplier and have an arrangement made with them. It’s almost case by case because, for example, for office space, there are standards that have to be...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Weledeh, that Bill 10, An Act to Amend the Income Tax Act, be read for the third time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I wish to advise the House that the Honourable Joe Handley will be late arriving in the House today due to his attendance at the official opening of the new Government of Canada building. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, before we went to a full cost recovery model for the pricing of the products, there were some communities that were paying more than the actual cost of product in that community and helping some of the smaller communities. We’ve had to make the change because it was deemed not to be fair to those communities that would have to pay more than what it cost for them to get that product to the community. The stabilization fund itself would come into impact in the areas and times when refuelling does happen. So there would be no changes throughout the year...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The dollars that are identified as surplus would stay within the stabilization fund until they exceed the amount of the stabilization fund. So with this amendment we are proposing, our stabilization fund would be set at $1 million. If our surplus was to grow beyond $1 million, anything over $1 million would go into the consolidated revenue. We would keep up to that maximum amount. The same would go the other direction. If we were to go in a deficit of more than $1 million, then we would have to adjust our prices to come back up to offset that deficit.

So with the...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As I stated in my opening comments, the initial surplus of the fund that we identified was $472,000. To help offset the increased price of product in communities, we’ve dipped into that fund and that’s the $230,000 we earmarked as a loss. We are offsetting the cost of home heating oil by 10 cents per litre in the communities we service. So in a way, we are trying to help those in the communities we service. We can only do this because we have that small surplus there. Once that surplus is gone, we are at the full cost of product price that will be charged in each...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the estimates we have given there are based on the refuelling that has been done recently, so we have had our final communities refuelled through the barging system, and this already incorporates the new prices we paid for the winter resupply that had occurred previously. We feel that we are fairly close with that number.

The reason we are projecting the loss in the stabilization fund is to offset some of the increases on home heating oil. We are dipping into that stabilization fund so that we don't have to bring the price up as far as we would if we...

Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there are a number of procurement policies that we do have within the government: sole source is one of them, negotiated contracts is another, and public tender process is the one we use most commonly. In this case, it wasn’t the staff on the ground in the community who made that decision. They provided the information to headquarters here and, from that information, it was brought forward to me that they were proceeding to make that decision based on the information that they had in hand. That decision could be made here in headquarters and that is...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in the community the Member is speaking about, there was a search done to see what would have been available in that community for these offices that we are looking for. One of the conditions we have is it has to meet a certain standard. The other business the Member is referring to did not, from what I am being informed, have the adequate space available to meet what was being requested. It was on that basis that we made the decision to proceed with doing a sole source to one company.

I am prepared to sit with the Member and go over this file if he feels...