Robert C. McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Yellowknife South, that Bill 42, An Act to Amend the Petroleum Products Tax Act, be read for the second time.

The bill amends the Petroleum Products Tax Act to impose a carbon tax on petroleum products and natural gas. It makes the amendments necessary for collection and administration of this new tax to be handled in the same manner as the current fuel tax. Purchasers are required to pay the tax, and vendors and collectors are required to remit the tax to the Government of the Northwest Territories. The bill allows the...

Most departments have 20-year infrastructure acquisition plans, and as money becomes available, they are able to put those plans in to do the actual building. You know, there are Members who are coming after us and I think we are going to position them to come and realize that there are some decisions that were made in this Assembly, I think, that made their work a little easier, and we hope it is a little easier, and if they are in a good position to match a lot of the federal projects, I don't know what is coming on. I mean, we have had some of the projects that we have been working on or we...

I have, as I said, initiated talks with them. We have not been able to sit down yet. We have been in session for awhile, now, but our next Finance Ministers' meeting, I believe, is in June. There might be opportunities for me to have a conversation with the federal Finance Minister beforehand and see if we can work on -- we are fortunate right now that, with the borrowing limit that we do have, most of our project, we are able to fit under there, but if there are announcements for bigger projects that might need more of an investment from the Government of the Northwest Territories, then we...

I am the Environment Minister, so I will speak with the Finance Minister and see if there are opportunities to access more money, but again, through a number of the programs that we have, such as disaster mitigation, there are funds that we will be able to access to assist with the communities. The communities, again, have those funds at their disposal if they choose to use them to do some fire smarting, with the folks that we have, because of the quiet fire season, assisting them. There are a number of opportunities there with the small community employment fund. I believe, in one community...

Actually, I don't think that we have offloaded that onto the communities. I think that the communities have taken the responsibility for that on, because who knows the communities more than the community, Mr. Speaker? It is not another pot of money that we have. The small community employment fund had, I believe, about $4.2 million, of which $3 million went to a lot of the smaller communities. Through the process that we are going through right now, we have added more money onto that because it has been such an important tool for a lot of the small communities. They have that opportunity to...

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, I recognized a couple of Pages who we had from Inuvik Twin Lakes. Today, I would like to recognize their chaperone. Blair Conley brought them down here. I would also like to take a minute to recognize Rita Furlong Arey from Aklavik, who I affectionately call Rita B. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The government is opposed to any kind of tax, but this is one that the federal government, in their infinite wisdom, had decided that they were going to implement, regardless. So our challenge was to try to mitigate the impact that it was going to have on people across the Northwest Territories. Our folks at the department went across the Northwest Territories. They listened to people. They understood that a tax was coming. They did not like it. Everybody is opposed to a new tax. That is why this government has in our four years done very little as far as raising taxes...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Thebacha, that Bill 44, Forest Act, be read for the first time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I said I was going to have discussions with the federal government. I was going to have the meetings with the federal minister. I'm a man of my word, and I will initiate those discussions. I think, with the work that we have done in the last three years in the Assembly with some of the corrections we have made on the budget, I think we positioned ourselves very well to be able to match it. I take the Member's point, and as I've said a number of times, a lot of the work that we do here has set the table for those coming after us, so they will be in the position, if there are bigger...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We are always prepared when there are opportunities for funding from the federal government. One of the things that I have told this House in the last three years is that a lot of the potential savings that we had so that we can match federal money as federal government money becomes available. A lot of the work that the Member is talking about is building a case for these potential projects. Normally, there is the exploratory building a case to try and access the bigger pots of money. When the bigger pots of money are accessed, then I feel that this government is in a...