Kevin O'Reilly

Merci, Monsieur le President. My question is for the Minister of Finance. I raised the usual issues around the northern resident tax deductions earlier today. The deductions are not indexed. Northerners get audited far too often, and we have to guess at the lowest return airfare. Look, I understand that the Minister here is not responsible for this, but she is our liaison with the federal Minister for the Canada Revenue Agency and speaks on behalf of Northerners. Can the Minister tell us whether there were any outcomes or changes as a result of the April 2019 federal consultation on lowest...

Thanks, Madam Chair. I move that committee defer further consideration of the Executive and Indigenous Affairs main estimates. Thank you.

Thanks, Madam Chair. I am not going to belabour this because my time is getting burned up here, but, if the Minister does not know whether the negotiators have actually had their mandates changed in any way since the new Cabinet has come in, we have got a real problem here, Houston. If those negotiators have not received new mandates or direction from this Cabinet and we are a third of the way through our term, I am seriously worried. I am going to leave it at that, Madam Chair, for this area, but I want to move on to my next one. That is a little bit of a warning that, if we are a third of...

Thanks, Madam Chair. There are three areas I'd like to question on page 126. Maybe I'll start with the lines around implementation, intergovernmental relations, and negotiations. There is no increase in any of those lines. You know, I was in the 18th Assembly. The candidate who eventually became the Premier promised that all of the ongoing negotiations were going to be completed in the four years. Do you know how many agreements we actually reached in four years? One. It was an agreement in principle for self-government in Norman Wells, for the Metis local there. One agreement in four years...

Merci, Monsieur le President. WHEREAS the Standing Committee on Rules and Procedures, in Committee Report 6-19(2), considered the question of remote sittings of the Legislative Assembly and made recommendations regarding changes to the Rules of the Northwest Territories Legislative Assembly;

AND WHEREAS, on November 5, 2020, the Committee of the Whole adopted all the recommendations contained in Committee Report 6-19(2);

AND WHEREAS the current Rules of the Northwest Territories Legislative Assembly were adopted on December 10, 2019;

AND WHEREAS a copy of an amended Rules of the Legislative...

I want to thank the Minister for that. Look, as I said before, this is a great system, and I really do truly appreciate the work that has gone into setting it up. I'm just wondering, though, in the dashboard, could we have something like the presence or absence of COVID and whether the levels are constant, increasing, or decreasing, and the dates of the tests? Is that the kind of information that could be put on the dashboard when it's available?

Merci, Monsieur le President. I want to thank the Minister for that. The issue is not just about indexing, though, it's about trying to guess what the lowest return airfare is each year. I just don't know why Canada Revenue Agency just can't set what it is and tell people or make it publicly available. It's a bundle of issues there, and I'd rather not be here next year or the year after, maybe even the year after that, bothering the Finance Minister about it, so I would like to encourage her to try to work with her colleagues in Nunavut and Yukon, maybe even get together with them and write a...

I want to thank the Minister for that offer to follow up. I would encourage her to do that. That consultation finished in April 2019 and, as I said, it's been radio silence ever since. A lot of residents did not travel South in 2020 due to the COVID pandemic. It is my understanding that recreational trips taken within the NWT are still eligible for vacation travel assistance deductions, as long as people have receipts. Can the Minister tell us whether this is still the case and whether there have been any discussions with Canada Revenue Agency officials about flexibility with this travel...

Merci, Monsieur le President. We all love to hate northern resident tax deductions. I seem to raise these deductions on an annual basis, like a broken record. I know this is not our Minister of Finance's program, but it is going to take our Finance Minister's intervention to get this fixed. We all know the ridiculous problems with the northern resident deductions: they are not indexed in any way; it takes monumental efforts to adjust the amounts; Northerners are subjected too often to time-consuming audits; and the annual guessing game of what the Canada Revenue Agency might accept as a lowest...

Thanks, Madam Chair. I move that the chair rise and report progress.