Michael Miltenberger

We’ve been working extensively on this. There is projected to be some savings to the consumers in Yellowknife, and we’ll track all the liquor that goes through and all the money that’s made and we’ll be prepared to report back to committee after September when things kick into gear and we start getting some actuals to look at.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. There is an ability to move funds between activities. There is a report that’s done on a regular basis, interactivity transfers where we have to account for all the money that’s moved, how it’s moved and to ensure that it’s moved appropriately. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The contracts in Yellowknife don’t come into effect until September, so we won’t see any actuals until probably the end of the fiscal year by the time they go into business and we start seeing what the numbers true up to be.

Those franchise agreements are arrangements between the communities and power provider. I would have to commit to the Member to find out the length of time of the agreements. I don’t have that knowledge readily at my fingertips. The GNWT does not have a role to play as the communities look at their franchise arrangements. For example, the community of Inuvik just signed an agreement with the Inuvik Gas for a 10-year period. That was work they carried out as the community government. Thank you.

Thank you. The way our system is structured, communities make the choice of who they would like to make an agreement with to provide their electrical services. There’s a process through the franchise process to do that and communities have done that over the years. Thank you.

Let me use another example. We put, I think, $425,000 into doing an Integrated Case Management Pilot Project, of which Inuvik and Yellowknife and, I believe, Hay River are going to be beneficiaries to push the departments that deal in the social envelope to integrate their case management approach so that when they deal with individuals and clients with multiple presenting problems, they do it in an integrated, coordinated way. A goal we’ve been striving to get done ever since I can remember and I’m in my 40th year now in government. We believe that maybe this will help us turn the corner on...

The work we do is cumulative and every Assembly builds on the work of previous Assemblies. Every budget builds on the work of previous budgets. The 17th Assembly charted out a bunch of priorities that we’ve been trying to implement. We’ve done things that the communities have asked us to do. We’ve put more money into prevention. We’ve protected programs and services. We’ve beefed up our capital plan in the places like the Far North. We’ve put in projects that are going to help not only provide infrastructure but some employment.

As I pointed out before, this is not a situation where communities...

Once again what I will commit to do is I’ll commit to put a paper together that I’ll share with committee that will lay out some of the challenges when it comes to raising some of the taxes, which we have looked at in terms of petroleum products and motive and non-motive fuels. It’s not like we dismiss it out of hand, but we have to look at the balance and the cost impact on the economy. I will share that with committee and we can have a discussion if committee wishes to ask us to appear before committee. If there is a consensus, we will look at including that in the transition document, but...

We’re looking at our initiative, as noted by the Member, where we’ve committed to provide an actual formal strategy that links together all the pieces that we’re doing on our 2,000 folks into the territory in now four years. We see that as, once again, a way where we can bring people into the territory.

The issue of changing the tax rates, more taxes on the higher income, lowering it on the lower incomes, we haven’t. I’ve made a decision, we’ve made a decision that we want to focus on building the tax base. So we haven’t spent a lot of time looking at how much we would need to raise the taxes...

The Power Corporation does have a rate of return, but as has been demonstrated over the last number of years, there have been cost pressures on the Power Corporation that far exceed to manage without the government’s ability to come and cushion the blow on the ratepayers. The 37 or 38 million dollars we put in to cushion the impact of what would have been a rate cliff because the prices of fuel hadn’t been raised over the last number of years. The most recent one would have been the low water surcharge that we’ve covered off as a contribution to the Power Corporation. Thank you.