Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I indicated in my Member’s statement, the cost of living in the Northwest Territories has escalated to a point of crisis. My questions today – and I understand the government is working on an Energy Strategy – will be to the Department of Finance Minister.
My first question is: Has the government talked to the federal government about northern residency deductions and increasing that allowable tax deduction for Northerners so that more money can go into their pockets to assist with cost of living?
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. The Minister of Finance, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Not recently.
Sorry, Mr. Speaker, I didn’t hear that response.
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. Could you redo your response to Mr. Bouchard, Mr. Miltenberger?
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I apologize to the Member opposite. Not recently.
In the cost of living issue currently before us, why would the Minister of Finance not be talking to the federal government about this situation to allow a bigger tax break for Northerners, especially when we have a declining population?
I would be happy to share with the Member the analysis that was done last time this issue was discussed among the three territories. There’s a benefit to higher wage earners, but overall, the general consensus from the three territories was it’s not something that would directly benefit Northerners overall or the territories as a whole. I would be happy to share that information with the Member and we could always revisit it once again as well.
If that analysis has been done before, what is the Department of Finance doing currently in taxation to help the Northerners with the cost of living to put more money into their… Are there ways that we can reduce taxes to help people in the Northwest Territories currently?
We have a very stable tax regime. We have committed not to raise taxes in the life of this government or the previous government for that matter. Income tax, corporate tax, we haven’t affected the taxes on motive or non-motive fuels, and we have as a government, if you look at our list of subsidies, at least $200 million worth of subsidies that we put on the table across government to support and assist Northerners.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bouchard.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Department of Finance is looking at things they’ve studied before. They say we’re stable, we haven’t changed anything. That’s right. We haven’t changed anything. We’re looking to promote 2,000 people to come to the Northwest Territories.
What’s the indicator to bring them here? What is the government going to do to promote the Northwest Territories as a place to live and reduce the cost of living? Maybe we don’t have to stay the same. Maybe we reduce the cost of gas taxes so that people can come.
What is the government going to do in the future to encourage people to come to the Northwest Territories?
We’re going to continue to talk about our own employees negotiating very competitive wage packages where some of our teachers, for example, are some of the best paid in the country. We are going to be talking in an Energy Charrette about the need to look at the issue of type of generation, and we’re going to indicate as a government that we’re prepared to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to deal with the generation issues that have a direct effect and impact on the cost of living tied to energy requirements that the Territorial Power Support Program we currently have does not benefit businesses, so the businesses in the small communities bear the full cost of power generation, which can be an extremely onerous burden.
We started our work on increasing the population by 2,000 people over the next five years. That work is well along the way. So, we have a whole host of things that we’re doing to address these issues.
I point out that we still have one of the best quality of life in the territory and some of the best social programs, best education programs, best support for seniors programs anywhere in the country, so we have a lot of attributes.
There are a lot of internal things we need to do, and I touched on those yesterday, in terms of being able to go south for those hard-to-fill positions and give our staff the capacity to hire while they’re down south on the spot. We’re going to do things with industry to do job fairs and those types of things collectively down south as we both go ahead to try to address the issues that face us.
We have hundreds of job vacancies that we’re trying to do a better job at. We’re investing $22 million over three years to put housing into the small communities, market housing, so that these hard-to-fill positions are not going to be not filled because there’s not proper housing. We’re onto phase three of decentralization to get positions out into the communities, out of the centre, tied to devolution, tied to our interest to make sure that we spread the government presence as broadly as we can across the Territories.
So there’s a whole host of things that we’re doing. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.
