Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Can the finance Minister explain to me why our government did not push back harder against carbon tax being imposed on the NWT at the time? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Nunakput. Minister responsible for Finance.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, if the Member wanted me to run down this clock for 35 minutes by describing all the efforts that we've gone into, I'm certainly happy to do that. I won't, Mr. Speaker, though it is tempting.
Mr. Speaker, there was an extraordinary effort by a number of Members of Cabinet, and a number of Members of Cabinets across this country, asking the federal government to make changes to their policy not the least of which would be to allow heating fuel to continue to be exempted for residential homes, which would make such a difference in northern, rural, and remote communities. They denied that request, Mr. Speaker, or frankly, just simply ignored it and didn't respond to it. Mr. Speaker, we asked also about having different forms of allowances to exempt the North. Again, the best we could do, Mr. Speaker, is be able to hang on to our own program, which we also had to go and do and had to negotiate just to hang on to our program, which would give us the flexibility to be able to tier our own cost of living supports and give us the flexibility in order to ensure that we could continue to maintain a system that would respond to our industry in a way that is very different from what's happening down south. So those are just some of the efforts, again, Mr. Speaker. I've talked about them at length. We've written letters. I've shared those letters. I've raised the issue on numerous occasions at FBT meetings that are public or that are attended by groups. I raised it directly with Ministers. And here we are. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I was the one that brought up the tiered system in regard to try to push it forward for having that in our territory under the carbon tax. Can the Minister explain to me why there are no virtually no exemptions on any of the items relating to the carbon tax in the communities? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I most certainly will not attempt to describe or explain what the federal government did or did not do with respect to the carbon tax. Mr. Speaker, I can say, just for the sake of information, that community electric power generation for communities is exempted. And obviously, again, our cost of living offset is meant to then adjust to the fact that we know that not only will expenses for in a household be going up, but business expenses go up and some of that will then spill over into individual consumers. And so what we tried to do was adjust our cost of living offset to acknowledge all of that. And, again, I have said before the consensus system here is such that we can make adjustments like having the tiered system. I think that was to the benefit of our system, and I'm glad that we have control of our system to be able to make that change. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Can the Minister explain why the government is no longer allowing rebates of carbon tax to be given to NWT residents? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. One of the changes that the federal government made was to remove the ability for point of sale rebates. We were not allowed to affect anything that would negate the carbon signal is what it is. So, essentially, they no longer want it to be a hidden thing. They want everyone to know exactly how much the carbon tax is. In theory, I believe, again, not wanting to certainly speak for the feds, but is the idea that this then makes us all more aware of how much fuel you're using. It doesn't do much good when you don't have any other choice of what you can use other than fuel to heat your homes. But there we have it, Mr. Speaker. Again, what we've tried to do is build it in to our cost of living offsets and our rebate programs, including the community government grants, something that will help offset those increased costs that we're no longer allowed to have a point of sale or the negation of the point of sale on. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary. Member for Nunakput.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. You know, Mr. Speaker, can the Minister explain why there's no exemption on the carbon tax such as for transportation of food, airplane fuel, home heating fuels, and the federal government blaming everybody but themselves for this carbon tax when you got the biggest emitters, such as India, China, and the US not paying carbon tax, and Canada's paying the carbon tax and putting the burden on the people. I know this is out of our control but everybody's being blamed but the federal government. This carbon tax should have been a nogo in this House. And in regards to when we brought forward and we brought the big the argument, I guess, on the vote to take this on, there should have been a tiered system in place. There should have been airplane fuel, heating fuel, and the transportation being supplemented. But it's not.
Mr. Speaker, can the Minister just explain why there's no exemptions on carbon tax on such these transportation, airplane fuel, and heating fuels in our territory? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, aviation gasoline and jet fuel is exempted still for now. Who knows what the feds might do next? But it is exempted for now. But most certainly diesel, gasoline that powers all the trucks that carry a lot of our cargo, that carry the other fuel to heat the homes, that power the barges that bring our much of our resupply to communities, those fuels are under the carbon tax.
Mr. Speaker, I've said this before, that the federal government does go to international conferences, acknowledges the fact that other developing countries, developed without access to the kind of industrial processes that have benefitted western nations and is acknowledging that maybe there needs to be an adjustment on an international scale, and yet, here we are in the North where the more southern parts of Canada have benefitted from the ability to industrialize when they did and using all of the carbon fuels that they did, and in the North we don't have the same level of infrastructure, we don't have the corridors that they do, we don't have the energy corridors, we are disconnected from the northern North American energy system, and yet here we are paying that tax. I share the Member's frustration, Mr. Speaker. But in a jurisdictional system, the carbon tax was going to get imposed whether we liked it or not, and they would simply take it. So we've held on to our own system. We've carved our own path. We're not going to start finding ways to reduce our carbon usage because that ultimately is going to save money, but we're going to need the feds to step up and help. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife North.
