Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Like the old saying goes, the gas goes in your car, not on your hands. Well, customers and trappers in the Sahtu cannot afford any more spillage at the pumps. They are getting gouged. My question is for Minister Beaulieu today.
Can the Minister tell this House why hunters and trappers, customers in Fort Good Hope, got a trick at the pumps last week instead of a treat? Someone needs to say more than I’m sorry.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister of Public Works, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The cost of gasoline or diesel motives or heating oil is all based on the purchase costs, the transportation, the commission that it costs us to deliver from our tanks to the homes or the cost of administering what they have there, which we refer to as operations and maintenance as well. Also, we keep track of the product evaporation and taxes. That’s it; there’s no profit on any of the fuels that we sell. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the Minister for sharing some of the information and the costs sheets with me. You know there is a gas war happening in Edmonton. It’s $1 per litre.
Would the Minister entertain giving customers, hunters and trappers in the communities like Fort Good Hope, a six-month grace period by selling fuel at the former rate of $1.80? Would he do that?
Mr. Speaker, the department, through the petroleum products division, has no ability to subsidize fuel. What we do have is the ability to stabilize the cost, so we have a Stabilization Fund that we use so that there are not sharp fluctuations in the costs. We use that fund to ensure that there isn’t a sharp increase at inappropriate times and so on. This fund, the Petroleum Fund, does not give us the ability to subsidize or we would run out and we would have to change the revolving fund. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, a promise is a promise is a promise. In Fort Good Hope they were promised that they’d be paying less for the fuel. We haven’t yet advanced far enough in our technology with the hunters and trappers to have little squirrels or animals operate our machines. We still rely on gas, and gas is what keeps our lives stable in Fort Good Hope.
I want to task the Minister again, using the Stabilization Fund, can that be used in our communities like Fort Good Hope? The hunters and trappers were told by the government that they will pay less for fuel. Can you give them a grace period, other than to let me know how the system works? That’s what they’re looking for. That’s something that this government could look at doing, to say I’m sorry, we made an oopsie.
The Stabilization Fund is there to stabilize the cost of fuel, that is correct; however, it is not there to provide subsidies. What the Member is asking for is for us to take a look at stabilizing at last year’s rate for an indefinite period of time, or six months, then what we would have to do is we would have to recover that cost at some point from somewhere. So, the only place where we have the ability to reduce the cost below the 100 percent is in Colville and Tsiigehtchic. Aside from that, other communities are too big, that once we start to provide any sort of percentage subsidy, it would cost us money and then we would see a reduction in our revolving fund. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary. Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to hold this government to account. In the CBC report this month, the government said people in Fort Good Hope would pay less to fill up their vehicles. Someone told the community of Fort Good Hope they would pay less to fill up their vehicles in the community.
Who said that? Which department? Which staff? If that’s not true, then they’ve got to be held accountable, and that’s what I’m saying. Can you say, I’m sorry, this is what we’ll do for this mistake?
It takes a real government to own up to that responsibility and that’s what I’m asking this government, in its goodness of the Stabilization Fund, to give them a grace period. Our fault, we’ll own up to it, we’ll bite the bullet. Because you know what? We just approved a $40 million project for the North, so we do have the money. Stop pretending we don’t have the money; the money is there. Let’s help the people in Fort Good Hope. Let this government be responsible and big enough to say, yes, we made this mistake and we’ll fix it and not goobley gobbling all over the answers. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The Member is correct that the wrong information and the wrong place was given out, and that was corrected. We had advised the community that that had occurred and we then issued the correct price to the community. However, again, it’s a fairly simple process that we have no ability to subsidize. Like I said to the Member, we do have an ability to stabilize the fund and that’s what we do, we try to stabilize the fund so that the constituents are not seeing sharp costs in fuel fluctuations in the cost of gasoline. So, I will check into exactly what had occurred, what type of information had been given to Fort Good Hope and I can let them know what we can do to resolve that error. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Member for Inuvik Boot Lake. Mr. Moses.
