Floyd Roland

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...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, last February, I introduced a fiscal strategy that took the necessary steps to ensure the ongoing fiscal sustainability of our government. This meant taking strong action to reduce spending while still making the necessary investments to help us achieve the goals and objectives set out in our strategic plan.

The cornerstone of our fiscal strategy was the introduction of the fiscal responsibility policy. Simply stated, the policy requires us to continually monitor expenditures to ensure we achieve the necessary cash surpluses from operations to finance 50...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the stabilization fund, as it's set up, would not address community-by-community specifics. What we would look at doing, as we have done in this case, is to look at the total amount of the product cost and how much of an impact that would have. We set an across-the-board 10-cent reduction in the price of home heating oil. So in each community it isn’t set at a flat rate, either. The cost of that product to get to that community is 100 percent cost recovery as we go forward here. Every community would pay for the price of the product, the shipping and...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, I will look into those specific problems in that area. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, as I stated in my opening comments with our act, if there are sections that are not mirrored or tied to the federal act, we would have to pay Canada Revenue Agency for dealing with those differences. That is why we are falling in line; and that would be the same with every other jurisdiction. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I’m aware of the file that the Member has spoken of and I can inform him, and I think he’s aware, that that file has been taken care of and information has been sent out. As for why it took 13 calls, I can’t speak to that specifically. I haven’t asked for that information from the department. I was aware that the file was being looked at and being dealt with. Unfortunately, as I was saying, as a result of creating the human resource service centres, we have found a large backlog of files that were not being dealt with when all departments had control of...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, this section is dealing with special provisions that were in the federal legislation that we had mirrored. Federal legislation has removed that section and now we are just following up and removing that from ours. There were never any special provisions for trappers under the federal Income Tax Act. Thank you.