Floyd Roland

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, higher fuel costs are a concern for northerners and a concern for this government. As Minister of Finance today, I would like to provide some detail about how our tax system affects fuel pricing.

The GNWT does not set or regulate the price of gas or other fuel products. The petroleum products division supplies 15 NWT communities on a full-cost recovery basis but does not set the initial price.

There is no GNWT tax on home heating fuel.

There is no GNWT tax on natural gas.

There is no GNWT tax on propane, whether it is used to heat homes or power...

Yes, I would like to have my witnesses present.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I’ll do that right now. I’ll apologize for the department in dealing with employees. We have timelines, we set our goals high to try to meet those timelines and, unfortunately, because of the work we’ve done around the corporate human resource service centres and pulling the staff together, some of the files have had to sit a little bit until we’ve had the staff in their new positions to deal with that. As well, as I was saying, because of this and pulling everybody in under one roof, it’s become much clearer now that there have been many files that...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, our relationship with our employees clearly set out their requirements in the employee handbook that we have in place with employees. As for an actual policy how we deal with those that are retiring from the government, again much of that comes out of the actual union agreements we have in place, years of service and so on. I’ll have to go back to the department to see if we have a specific policy in place for dealing specifically with retirements. I don’t believe we do have. We operate with the union agreements we have in place in how we deal with our...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we have been doing the work necessary to bring this facility back online. We’ve had a structural engineer look at it. We have a plan together to repair the issues that have caused it to close this year. The concern was about lateral bracing. Because the foundation was in such poor shape, there was concern it would not withstand an earthquake event that may happen. Inuvik is considered to be in an active area or active zone for earthquakes, so that was one of the main considerations taken. The work has been ongoing and is almost complete in that...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we would be willing to look at a number of initiatives out there that can help people reduce their consumption of energy and the thermal scam idea is…

---Laughter

…thermal scan idea is one that is something we use on our own facilities, and when we travel in the communities we will make that available to community governments and we can look at seeing if it can be used for individual homes as well. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, for the Department of Public Works and Services itself, we have looked at a number of initiatives for dealing with government assets and facilities. One of the things we are doing is in the area of thermal scan to see how our buildings are operating and how much heat loss there is and where that heat loss is occurring. That is an area that we are going to be improving on as well as the building practices that we now have in place here in the Territories. We know that adds cost to the facilities up front but feel that it is important over the life of...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have an amendment to make on the bill.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, when employees inform us that they will be retiring or transferring or leaving this government for whatever reason, there are forms that have to be filled out and sent in. From time to time, we find, unfortunately, that some forms are omitted or that the department the staff member was working for filled out some portion in error and caused a delay in the schedule that has been identified.

As I stated, we are working on improving the system. That is why corporate human resource service centres were established to create a better environment for employees...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, again the amendments that we are proposing here would bring us in line with the federal tax act. There is no plan from our part to bring forward any other special provisions that would create any differences between our act and the federal act. Thank you.