Floyd Roland

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.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in the area of human resource service centres, as the Member has pointed out, we have realized throughout government, because of the way the human resources was decentralized, that every department had its own section, which caused us a fair bit of problems. We recognize that and put forward this plan to bring the human resource service into centres within each region and here in headquarters to work better with our employees to make sure the forms were getting done and those things were being dealt with. One of the problems we’ve found as a result of doing...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With me here, I have Mr. Aitken from the Department of Justice and to my right I have the deputy minister of Finance, Ms. Margaret Melhorn, and from Finance, as well, is Mr. John Monroe. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased to introduce Bill 10, An Act to Amend the Income Tax Act. This bill addresses a number of changes to the NWT Income Tax Act to ensure it remains consistent with the federal Income Tax Act.

The Tax Collection Agreement between the Government of the Northwest Territories and Canada provides that we will keep the NWT act consistent with the federal act. Where different provisions exist, the Canada Revenue Agency could charge our government for the cost of administering those different provisions. There is no cost to the NWT for the Canada Revenue Agency to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, again, as I committed to, I’ll gladly sit down with the Member and those parties interested in trying to see what arrangements we can work out. Again, qualified with the fact that we have our own limitations that we have to operate within, and that will affect the outcome of that. But as I said earlier, I’ll be happy to sit down with the Member to get some more of the detail and try to find some of the areas where there are concerns. When it comes to the Intergovernmental Services Agreement that’s in place, or the ISA, as the Member has spoken to, I’d...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, when it comes to this government’s role in working with the Tlicho Government in fulfilling our agreement, we are committed to that process, and we will follow through with what we can to ensure that there’s a smooth transition or qualify that with what we can in perspective of how we deal with all our other employees within the government as well. Thank you.