Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m just wondering what’s happening with the Financial Administration Act, unless that’s been asked already. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The intention is to have it brought into the House for first reading in October. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Committee, page 5-13, activity summary, deputy minister’s office, operations expenditure summary, $89.632 million.
Agreed.
Thank you. Page 5-14, activity summary, deputy minister’s office, grants and contributions, $86.532 million. Agreed? Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I realize the amount being contributed to Northwest Territories Housing Corporation has taken a big leap this year, from $67 million to $83 million. My understanding is that this is going towards bumping up housing in small communities outside of Yellowknife in particular. Am I correct in that understanding? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Deputy Minister Aumond.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. A couple of big items that are causing the increase to the contribution to the Housing Corporation for ’14-15 are there’s a $5 million increase to their capital planning target for themselves and expand portfolio and market rental units in non-market communities by $6.75 million. Then there are some increased supports for homelessness or hard to house in non-market communities and also some money, $700,000, for energy initiatives. Thank you.
I know the $700,000 was in there last year, as well, so I assume that’s not part of the bump-up this year. So about $7 million for providing market housing in our small communities. We are transferring a large number of positions or locating a large number of positions through our decentralization work related to devolution and additional decentralization work. Is the housing that we’re providing for these people, will that be covered through the devolution implementation funding?
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. No.
Thanks for that response. It’s obviously because of devolution that this is happening. I know the Minister is claiming that we’re being very efficient with these dollars, but here we are not using the money that was intended for this sort of expense.
How can the Minister justify not using the surplus devolution implementation dollars to supply market housing in our communities that is clearly the result of decentralization of devolved positions from the government?
Thank you. It’s a bigger issue than just the devolution positions we have as we’ve discussed at some length in this Assembly, a significant number of vacancies, about half in Yellowknife, half outside of Yellowknife and in the smaller communities, one of the biggest impediments to staffing hard to staff positions has been the lack of adequate housing. So we, as a government, have come up with a plan and the Assembly is going to be voting on this to put $22 million, roughly, over three years into housing in the small communities to address that need. In the other larger communities, the regional centres, housing issues are not going to be covered by devolution and we, as a government, are not going to get back into housing and the Housing Corporation’s focus is going to be on the smaller communities. Thank you.
Thank you. How many devolution positions are we decentralizing?
Thank you. I believe it’s 52. In phase three we’re going to be looking at further decentralization as well. That work is underway and other opportunities for decentralization are being identified. So that’s to date, but I’ll ask Mr. Aumond if he wants to add anything further to that issue. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Deputy Minister Aumond.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. The only point I would add is in addition to the 52 positions being decentralized for devolution, ’14-15 we’re also establishing an additional 50 positions outside of those devolution-related activities in communities outside of Yellowknife. Thank you.
Thank you, Deputy Minister. Mr. Bromley.
So it sounds to me like at least 50 percent of this housing cost should be derived from the devolution implementation dollars, obviously, especially given that these devolved positions generally have bodies with them, whereas our vacant positions don’t.
Just on the Northwest Territories Power Corporation general rate application business, I see our subsidies; exceptional subsidies are dropping while the cost of living associated with electricity is soaring through the roof, as people know. I believe close to 30 percent in the last few years increase in our electricity rates, our subsidies are dropping from $15 million to $9 million last year and now at about $3 million this year. What’s happened to the dollars that we were putting into those subsidies?
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. Kalgutkar.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. As the Member has noted, this is the last year of the three-year top-up that we gave the NTPC to help them transition their power rates by 7 percent over the last three years. So after the ’14-15 year, the $2.8 million will sunset and that should rate the NTPC’s operating revenue requirements.
Thank you for that information. Just to be accurate here, it’s been 7 percent per year for the last three years and another 5 percent on top this year. The question was what are we now doing with the dollars that we’ve been spending. Committee has made suggestions that those dollars should be going into reducing costs of living especially through energy costs in the NWT in the past. What are we doing with the difference between the $15 million and $3 million this year, and the $9 million, $9.5 million last year and the $3 million this year?
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That money is sunsetted and the fiscal framework is adjusted, and the money has been absorbed or will be used. We have other costs, as we laid out in the budget, that have to be dealt with, but that money is sunsetted. I’ll ask Mr. Kalgutkar if he wants to add anything further.
Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Kalgutkar.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. No, the Minister is right. The funding was only approved for the three-year period, and once the revenue requirement caught up to the rates then the money was just scheduled to expire.
Thank you, Mr. Kalgutkar. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Again, just to be fully accurate here, what Mr. Kalgutkar meant, I think, was that this will catch us up to the point where we will continue to subsidize at $11 million to enable the Power Corporation to do their business. I guess I’ll leave it at that. The will of committee and interest of committee and having those dollars moved from subsidies into more efficient ways of addressing the cost of living for our residents has once again been ignored. I just want to make that clear with this.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. I’ll take that as a statement. Committee, page 5-14, activity summary, deputy minister’s office, grants and contributions. Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a brief comment here. I had the same question with regard to the NWT Power Corporation general rate application funding. I am, I guess, pleased to see that this is the last year that we’re spending this money, but I want to reiterate that, like Mr. Bromley, I think we ought to be putting a larger focus on trying to decrease our cost of living, and I will have a question when we get to the page where we talk about the subsidy that we give to our residents in terms of electricity. But it seems to me that we have gone from $15 million to $9.5 million and now to slightly less than $3 million, and that money, that subsidy that we were providing for residents has just kind of melted into our general revenues and kind of disappeared and I don’t get a sense that we are putting enough effort into trying to reduce cost of living. No question there, but I wanted to make the comment.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Committee, we’re looking at page 5-14, activity summary, deputy minister’s office, grants and contributions, $86.532 million.
Agreed.
Page 5-15, information item, deputy minister’s office. Any questions?
Agreed.
Page 5-17, activity summary, fiscal policy, operations expenditure summary, $40.129 million. Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Under this fiscal policy we know that the NWT tax policies and monitoring come under this policy. Can we get a bit of an elaboration on what exact tax policies are monitored within fiscal policy.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Deputy Minister Aumond.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Fiscal policy division will monitor not only our own tax revenues but also some of the policies with respect to how they get administered and what’s happening across the country with respect to different types of taxes. In terms of compliance and other things, that’s another part of the department that does that, but fiscal policy will, from time to time, look at our taxes, look at our revenues and look at what’s going on with the cost of either living or doing business in the Northwest Territories and come up with an appropriate balance that allows the economy its best opportunity to grow at a sustainable rate.
I appreciate the deputy minister’s response to that. Would taxes such as tobacco, fuel, payroll, does that come under the same fiscal policy?
In terms of the collection and compliance of those taxes, they’re done under our treasury division.
Was that a no?
I’ll try to clarify. For example, looking for inspections, compliance and collections of tax revenue are done by our treasury division. Fiscal policy will come up with tax policy that would help us administer that. Also in this section you will find the cost of living tax credit, which is used as an offset to payroll tax that all of us pay.
I appreciate the deputy minister clarifying that. I’ll use that in conjunction when we do this next year. I think, the net fiscal benefit monitoring falls under this policy, and I believe my question has to do with the amount of benefit that is being transferred to the Aboriginal parties from resource revenues, and I believe, according to the budget address and according to the activity, I believe it’s $15 million being set aside in this budget. Can we get an idea, the $15 million that is in here, what percentage of that is of our resource revenues for the time period?
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Minister Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That’s the estimate that we have booked for Aboriginal government’s share of the net fiscal benefit that’s flowing to us through the agreement to collect all resource royalties; 50 percent goes to the federal government, the remaining 50 percent, when we look at that, of that, 25 percent of what’s left as agreed to go to the Aboriginal governments, and that’s what we anticipate based on past estimates that will accrue over the course of this coming year starting April 1st.
I’m just trying to figure out what $15 million represents here. According to the information we have here and talked about in the House and we’re hearing the term 25 percent, is 25 percent of the resource revenues $15 million? I just want to make sure I’m dealing percentage and numbers.
If we start with the global figure of we are going to collect roughly in total $120 million, 50 percent of that goes to the federal government. The remaining $60 million, we’ve agreed 25 percent would go to the Aboriginal governments, which gets you to the $15 million, leaving about $45 million coming to us free and clear, of which we’re putting 25 percent of that $45 million into the Heritage Fund. Thank you.
Great, thank you. Again, clarity is always the important key here. Just for the sake of understanding, under the grants and contribution transfers definitely a large part of that is this transfer to the Aboriginal signatories. I know this is maybe a book adjustment, but when is the actual physical money being given to the signatories physically? Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, as with the Heritage Fund, it will flow once it’s accrued and we know exactly what amount of money we have available to in fact divvy up. Thank you.
