Caroline Wawzonek

Mr. Speaker, carbon tax is coming. Mr. Speaker, the large emitters right now businesses don't have a special program under the federal system either. The federal government will decide where they want to put the money, how they want to put the money. Right now where we've seen them put their money is in electric vehicles, in heat pumps, which don't work in the Northwest Territories. So, Mr. Speaker, I'm not sure that that's necessarily the direction that we all want to go with. As I've said before, we have figured out what the fuel usages have been in the business sector and the private...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So, Mr. Speaker, even if we don't accept the proposal that we're putting forward, the tax rates will not change. The tax rates that are being put in place on April 1st from the federal government for carbon tax are coming. What we're trying to do, and what we've done is, particularly after discussions with Members, we're proposing to have a heating fuel offset that will be based on the average household heating usage in the high use zones, middle use zone, and the smaller use zone, which from our calculations, will cover the costs for residents of the increases to the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Member must be reading my social media. I had the opportunity to attend an FPT recently where I think my lead word was "interoperability." It is something that, quite frankly, doesn't sound very exciting, not the sort of thing that gets somebody's political blood boiling, but is quite critical to the functioning of the services from the IT perspective and one that we need to do a better job of, Mr. Speaker. There's really no way around that. So I'm pleased to have some attention here. It's been brought to my attention by my officials that lack of...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, Madam Chair, I'm happy to try to get that data. And, again, just having briefly a conversation here with the director of fiscal policies, that that may be difficult to determine just what the amount of lost revenues are, are sort of anecdotal. The expectation is that it's not likely a significant value nonetheless and again, I mean, if it's across every type of tax credit, yes, we would need to just go back and look at exactly what kinds of credits we're talking about and what kind of lost revenue we're talking about. But, again, we'll go and have a look and we'll...

Thank you, Madam Chair. No, there's no lost revenues on that. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, on my right I have Kelly Bluck, who is director of fiscal policy within the Department of Finance, and on my left I have Christina Duffy, who is legislative director.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I am here to present Bill 62, An Act to Amend the Income Tax Act, No. 2.

The main purpose of Bill 62 is to make various legislative retroactive housekeeping measures to the territorial income tax legislation to comply with the CanadaNorthwest Territories Tax Collection Agreement. These amendments keep territorial legislation current and harmonized with the federal income tax legislation. Specifically, the proposed changes include:

Remove a reference to a repealed federal provision about an option for trusts to pay tax;

Exclude a reference to the federal...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in many ways this is the culmination of why ISSS was created in the first place under the last administration and now is coming more and more to its fruition. Again, I know we've said this more times than I would like to count, COVID was not a help in this particular regard. It was certainly a big draw on this particular division to pause some of the transitions required during COVID. But now turning back to what should be regular business, the chief information office does create a business partner approach with departments. This is meant to have that...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the Member's observation. There certainly are budget lines that go department by department, which can make it difficult perhaps to look at it from a corporate perspective. I am, however, happy to say the Department of Finance is now putting in practice a way to better review and report on those specific items, computer hardware and software. That should make it easier to look at this from a governmentwide perspective and ensure that we are obviously controlling those costs but also better servicing the public through having better control over...

Thank you, Madam Chair. So, Madam Chair, I can say that refundable tax credits do show up in the public accounts but something that is a non-refundable credit may not be the same. Obviously, we'll certainly do our best to try to make better use of the information sharing provisions. But, I mean, if there are specific elements of tax credits or specific tax provisions that the Member's interested in getting information on, you know, if we can get that, again, I'm happy to try to distill that data as much as possible. This, theoretically, is supposed to help with that data collection from the...