Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As everyone who owns a house or a car knows, fuel prices seem to continually go up and down, and there’s no stability. Many people are familiar with the issue of last product in, first product out, so that’s sort of the pricing principle. As many people know, especially here in Yellowknife, when the ice bridge went out, no new product was trucked in to Yellowknife — I can tell you that — but the prices fluctuate. Based on that sort of pricing model, it seems completely unreasonable that fuel prices were going up and down.
I wrote the Minister of Finance about some pricing regulations and possibilities. There are other provinces across Canada, five to be exact, that regulate to some degree fuel prices, and that’s motor fuels as well as home-heating fuels.
Mr. Speaker, my question to the Minister of Finance is: will he look into this issue to see if we can create some type of stability here for the Northwest Territories, sort of something to take the volatility out of the ups and downs of the fuel pricing?
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Minister of Finance, Mr. Roland.
Mr. Speaker, the area of fuel prices in the Northwest Territories is impacting across the territory, especially in our more remote communities.
The factor of the free market plays a significant role in the larger communities, where private businesses bring the product in and sell it to consumers. We’ve looked at other jurisdictions where they’ve had what would be considered moderate as a potential price control.
The fact is that when you look at the other pieces of legislation out there, it’s not very clear, and it’s not necessarily price control. There may be a delayed impact, but there’s still an impact of that. When you do a price comparison across the country, there are still a number of other jurisdictions that are in the neighbourhood of beginning to pay the price that we’ve seen, at least in this community. We have to remember that in our smaller communities, we even pay a higher price as well.
Mr. Speaker, I’m not going to say that the Minister is completely wrong, but I just don’t believe him.
Mr. Speaker, the fact is that a PUB type of system will help protect and stabilize prices. Five out of our ten provinces in Canada can’t be completely wrong by finding an approach to balance this out. It would still allow that industry to raise prices, yet it would put the onus on them to bring a mild amount of justification.
So, Mr. Speaker, with all of that said, would the Minister of Finance reconsider his position in the context of providing a stable, protected environment for our consumers in the Northwest Territories?
We are open to looking at ways where we can mitigate the impact of the cost of living in the Northwest Territories. What we do and the impact of what we do is something we have to look at.
The research we’ve done to date shows, in some of these cases, if you set up a structure that starts limiting the free market capability, we end up putting other pressure on ourselves. Jurisdictions have found that if you tighten up the market so much and regulate it as a government, you reduce that free market capability, and they go out and sell their product in other places where they do make their money and then put an additional squeeze on our own constituents. So we have to take that in consideration.
We would be willing to look at it under the refocusing or the cost-of-living scenarios that we have to look at as a government.
Mr. Speaker, that’s the approach I’m looking for, so I will say that, hopefully, this will be my last question. Is that a commitment that they will include that into that process, or is that sort of, “We’ll think about it”?
Mr. Speaker, we’ll be willing to look at it. Within the cost-of-living strategic initiatives there are a whole number of areas, and we definitely have to look at how we impact the lives of people in the Northwest Territories.
Thank you, Mr. Roland. Oral questions. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.
