Floyd Roland

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yesterday the Minister of Finance for Canada, the Honourable Ralph Goodale, tabled the 2004 federal budget. I am pleased to report that this budget contained some good new for the Northwest Territories.

Among the issues addressed in the budget were the territorial formula financing agreement, a northern strategy for economic development, northern oil and gas development and health care. Also, there are provisions in the budget for environmental cleanup of contaminated sites and seabed mapping of the continental shelf. Although more detail is required on some of these...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in the correspondence I received from the federal Finance Minister, Minister Goodale, he states it is a one-year break. The rebasing exercise will not happen for 2004-05, and there is direction that we have our people get together and work out the tax effort portion of what we would say is rebasing. We will have that in place by 2005-06. So it is a one-year break and that is why we have the $50 million for this year that would have been taken out, and we’d already built our budgets around that money being taken out. So he has given us one year to get...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, on the territorial formula financing side, of the amount that was identified, the Northwest Territories over the five-year period would see approximately $74 million. That, Mr. Speaker, is already built into our budget estimates and forecasting, and we are still falling short. For example, the other one of $90 million over five years, split, if you use the existing formulas that have been in place, we might see $6 million a year coming North, not through the GNWT but through DIAND as we expect it will flow, and we are waiting to see the initiatives, the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, part of what we are putting forward in this strategy that we have and balancing our budget is increasing our own revenues, taking into the scenario that there is going to be a growth and demand of services. As we argue right now, we are not able to keep up with what we have, we are not able to keep up with the level of capital infrastructure that we should be putting into our communities and replacing existing facilities. We are not able to keep up with that because of our fiscal situation. So we have a long way to go before we can look at sunsetting...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the sustainability we have moved forward is something we have to deal with as a government, and have to deal with it within our existing envelope. There are ongoing discussions and will be ongoing discussions with the federal government around the adequacies of our formula tax effort, re-establishing our base. There are also discussions about royalty revenue sharing. That is an important picture, it is an important item, but right now as our strategy is laid out that is outside of what we can count on for funds in the Northwest Territories. We see it...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Member has raised this issue prior and referred to Bill C-48 and, as a result, I had asked for that information and we’d brought it to the department to have a look at the scenarios that could come out of it. The initial scenarios would cost the government in its revenue base. We’d have to see what kind of development could occur. As I stated, the exercise we’re going through and will continue to go through is that we don’t have enough revenue at this time to maintain the level of services and programs that are existing. We’re looking at options. If...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, at the present time, though many of the aboriginal groups now are working towards self-government status, they do not have the ability for tax regimes at this time. There are ongoing discussions with the Department of Finance in the area of tax sharing of when these self-government agreements come into effect. So for the time being, there’s not that avenue. As a government we’re looking at all the options we can put forward in securing enough revenue to provide programs and services for the residents of the Northwest Territories. So we will look at options...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, a couple of points. One of the reasons we are facing our fiscal situation is that previous governments were given one-time earnings and so on, and spent that money on important issues across the North. But now we’re in a situation where we don’t have the money to keep on going. We’re putting this money towards the deficit.

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And that’s what it’s identified for, as I stated in my statement earlier today. The amount budgeted of the $525,000, that’s the impact we think we’ll get in the Northwest Territories as a result of the $400 million the Member...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First and foremost is the result of the exercise of not rebasing and that is $50 million. The biggest thing is keeping ourselves in a healthy state. So that's why we've identified this to go towards the deficit. We're not going to dig the hole that we're in any deeper.

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That will have positive spin-off effects going forward.

The other side of that is if we don't get the parties to the table to deal with royalty revenue sharing and get some real action happening around that table; as well, if the negotiations with federal Finance on the tax effort side do not...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the amount identified for territorial formula financing will be in the area of $7.6 million for the 2004-2005 year and that is built into our estimates. In fact, even for 2005-2006, the $9.2 million, those numbers are already built into our forecast of what we were working with as a result of our meeting with the Finance Minister in February. The $50 million that I referred to is due to putting off the rebasing exercise on our tax effort for the 2004-2005 year, which gives us a one-year amount. That’s not new money. It would have been taken out. They’ve...