Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is to the Minister of petroleum products. I want to ask the Minister on lowering the fuel prices on the heating diesel costs in our communities. As you know, in Colville Lake 86 percent of residents own their homes. There are 20 percent of single parents in Colville Lake, so this will greatly help them.
I want to ask the Minister, how did this come about in regards to lowering the costs and will we see more reduction in the heating fuel costs in these communities?
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister of Public Works and Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. We were able to lower the costs by seeing that the fuel that we buy is referred to as fuel at rack prices that came down quite drastically over the last few months. We are anticipating that by the time you get the fuel into the community, it will be at a much lower cost. We are sort of blending at this point and lowering the costs. We do anticipate additional costs for heating fuel when we actually deliver the fuel sometime between the middle of this month and the middle of next month. Thank you.
Certainly it is good news for the private homeowners to see the lower costs of the heating fuel, especially for the high percentage of single families in the Sahtu region.
We also have about 112 trappers. In Fort Good Hope, 77 percent of the families rely on country foods, food from the land. The residents of the Sahtu are asking, will this also happen with the gasoline prices?
Mr. Speaker, we are anticipating that the cost of gasoline will be lowered in the communities as well. In the case of gasoline, we want to deliver the gas before we make the adjustment. It appears to be a little more volatile and the gas price could actually go back up and we do believe that some of the gas prices have been rising down south and we could feel the impacts here and in other communities. We are going to wait until we do purchase and deliver before we lower it, but we do anticipate that it would be coming down from what the current prices are now. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
That is anticipation, waiting for good news from the government. I want to ask the Minister, would that happen before the closing of our winter roads, which is usually about March 30th or 31st, depending on weather. Thank you.
Yes, Mr. Speaker, it will be. We will be moving gasoline into communities on the winter road. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.
