Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today my questions are for the Minister of Finance. As I indicated in my Member’s statement, solutions to our financial challenges are both complicated and difficult. Just for the record, I don’t support, with the exception of possibly taxes on cigarettes and booze, any increases in taxes that affect our residents or taxes on our residents. I do support resource taxes, and I do support initiatives that will be focused on increasing our population.
So keeping that in mind, my question is to the Minister of Finance, and it is: has the Minister of Finance met with the diamond mines to ensure that they are meeting their obligations under the socio-economic agreements with respect to northern employment? Specifically, have you met with the diamond mines to ensure that they are finding ways of encouraging their employees to stay and live in the North?
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Minister of Finance, Mr. Miltenberger.
Mr. Speaker, ITI regularly meets with the diamond mines. There is a meeting set up here in the next number of weeks with Minister Bob McLeod and Minister Lafferty, as well as myself, to talk to their president. They have indicated an interest to us to talk about the revenue options paper. So we do meet on a regular basis, but there is clearly going to be some special attention paid to the work that is currently going on in terms of the consultation process.
Mr. Speaker, are the diamond mines meeting the conditions of their socio-economic agreements with respect to fly in/fly out employees and employing Northerners?
Mr. Speaker, we estimate there are over 2,000 workers that are in the business of flying in and flying out. With the work we are undertaking, we’d hopefully capture at least 300 of those over the next number of years. Clearly, we believe that we have to do a better job working with the mines with the bilateral arrangements, socio-economic agreements, to realize those numbers.
So will the Minister commit to working with the diamond mines to ensure that they do meet the terms and conditions of their socio-economic agreements, thus encouraging more employees to live in the Northwest Territories, which will help us with our financial situation?
Mr. Speaker, the government is committed to working with the diamond mines; we do it as a matter of course. We are putting special attention and emphasis on this because of the revenue options that we see dealing with the fly in/fly out workers. Being able to get more of them located in the North, as has been raised in this House repeatedly by the Member for Kam Lake — he has pushed us to do that — is a key part of the possible revenue options that we see would add to our economic pace and help us grow the population of the Northwest Territories.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Item 8, oral questions. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
