Michael McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we've been hearing talk of the pipeline for a long time and, as one of my colleagues asked this morning, what pipeline? It's time to quit talking, Mr. Speaker, and time to get working. Most people in the NWT stand to benefit from the construction of the pipeline, but now it seems that the project is running into one delay after another while everyone tries to think of what they can ask for next. The problem is, Mr. Speaker, that there are many excessive demands from all parties, and this is preventing the project from moving ahead and we may never see a...

Mr. Chairman, it would be our expectation that the community or municipal government would give some form of notice to individuals who had arrears that they were in a position to be having their charges transferred to a property tax. However, having said that, there is no real formal notice requirement in this legislation that requires the municipal government to provide that in writing. It really would be what the communities decide to set up in terms of process. There is no other outside appeal mechanism aside from the municipal government.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the ability to transfer unpaid water or sewer bills, service bills, within a municipality applies to the municipal taxation authorities, which are basically the tax-based communities. This is a section that was in there historically. There has been a request to put it back in place. We don’t formally have a dispute mechanism as part of this bill. However, there is a section that allows the communities, through the municipal legislation, to set up a bylaw that will allow for the creation of a dispute mechanism or an appeal board. So the communities have...

Mr. Chairman, I guess we should read it out. We offered to read it out earlier, what actually falls under that category. We could do so.

Yes, I would, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, I apologize if we weren’t clear. There are three amendments we’re talking about today. The amendment referring to the unpaid charges and transferring them to property taxes applies only to municipal taxation authorities, and if you look at the three different acts or three different classifications of communities, you’ll see the wording is different. There is the opportunity. So it only applies to the municipal taxation authority. Right now there are only the tax-based communities that are part of that. This will apply to the hamlets and the charter communities once, and if...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I agree with the Premier that this project is important to the valley. With all of these demands being made from all of the parties involved, is this holding up the talks with Ottawa on this resource revenue sharing? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Chairman, I’m not sure if anybody would have the title or label of squatters if they were paying taxes. I’m not clear on exactly what the Member is getting at. If he’s asking if services being provided to squatters would be transferred over to property taxes, unless they had land tenure, there’s no ability to do that. It doesn’t apply to all the communities, it applies only to the municipal taxation authorities which currently are only the tax-based municipalities.

Rephrase it? Okay. Let me try that again.

---Laughter

What is the GNWT’s position on this? Does the GNWT believe that this could possibly hurt or kill the project? Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think I did it again.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, we certainly take the comments about the briefing of NWTAC and the possibility of translation. Some of the comments may be misinterpreted through translation. That is not our intent. Our intent is to share the information and to share it in the best way we can. We will encourage NWTAC to attend the public presentations in person if it is possible for them. We will also encourage them to use Hansard. However, there is still that avenue that we have made the commitment for, which is to share information that's public with them and to talk about it. But we...