Robert Bouchard

My understanding of this tax is it was created to tax those people who work in the Northwest Territories, but we give those taxes back to the residents of the Northwest Territories. When did the Government of the Northwest Territories change the payroll tax? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Do we actually know how many people in the Northwest Territories, what percentage of people that file taxes get their payroll tax back in any form? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In 1993 the Government of the Northwest Territories established the NWT Payroll Tax at 1 percent. In 2005 we upped that percentage to 2 percent. Currently our government collects $42.7 million in payroll tax.

This tax was originally created to tax everybody who worked in the Northwest Territories and then rebate the residents of the Northwest Territories their 2 percent. Since that time, the GNWT has begun to keep that tax from some of the higher paid individuals, higher income earners. We are collecting taxes from out of province, but now were taxing our residents.

In...

I will leave that point for now. My next question is adult and child care in the southern facilities, it seems we have this on an annual basis. I know it’s been talked about in the House, as well, but this is a very expensive cost to the GNWT. I am wondering what we are doing to repatriate some of these individuals or find specialists to come to the Northwest Territories so we can repatriate these individuals.

No further questions.

I guess my question is who decided that this project was a priority with the extra $900,000 that was lapsed over from Public Works and Services?

The $900,000 from SAMS demolition was not used so this is where we’re finding the money from, I guess. Is that from this year, ’14-15, or is that from a previous year?

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Next on my list I have Mr. Blake.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Deputy Minister Guy.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just wanted to make some brief opening comments. Public Works and Services has been working on the shared services and procured shared services and we’ve been trying to work out some of the details on this process. I guess overall I support the concept of centralizing or regionalizing some of this purchasing. You know, in the Hay River area we’ve been able to get some of those positions and do some of that stuff.

I guess I’ve been hearing some concerns, and there are some growing pains of going back to this process. I say “back” because I think the government used to do...