Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yesterday during question period the Member for Range Lake was placed on notice by the Finance Minister for the second time this session. This time I have questions about tobacco tax collection, so I’m hoping the esteemed Minister had a chance to review and refresh himself with the recently tabled public accounts before the House. I hope we can return to questions without scoring a hat trick of unfortunate notices.
Can the Minister of Finance indicate to the House where his department gets their statistical data on tobacco purchases, use, tax collection and audits and is this information publicly available? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. The honourable Minister of Finance, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We get it from a variety of sources, from the people who sell it, from the people who retail it, from our own officials. I will pull together those facts and document and I will share it with the Member. Thank you.
I appreciate the Minister’s cooperation. I do ask that the department make that information available publicly and not only to the Member, if that would be something they could look at.
Can the Minister clearly articulate to the House, according to our recent tabled public accounts, why our actual tobacco tax collection was so way off from our 2013 Main Estimates? Thank you.
There are a number of possibilities which we’re checking into. I can’t definitely give him a clear answer on that as the matter is still being checked into. I have gone back to the officials after our discussion in the House yesterday, as well, so I will, once again, have that information, when it’s ready, provided to the Member. Thank you.
I appreciate the department and Minister investigating this huge shortfall. I think it was very problematic for those who actually reviewed the public accounts at the time.
Can the Minister give a bit more of an indication, is that including audits, and if so, are audits being performed on out-of-province wholesalers? Thank you.
We’ve, in fact, added a couple of auditors to the Finance operations to enhance their capabilities. We continue to monitor the whole chain from the wholesaler up to the retailer. We want to try to work, as well, with other departments as we try to track the impact and look at what Stats Can can tell us.
I would point out that when it comes to measuring 42,000 people amongst the 30-some million Canadians there are, we tend to be referred to as statistically insignificant and it is problematic when they do make their numbers available. Oftentimes, we are even less than a rounding error in terms of the quantity of people in the Northwest Territories compared to Canada at large. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I know the Minister has mentioned the issue of statistically unviable information from the Northwest Territories, but we clearly know, if we want, we can provide these statistics. We do have the means. We have a stats bureau that can do all this stuff for us.
Can the Minister indicate what safeguards or policies has the Department of Finance formalized to mitigate these yearly variances that we’re seeing in tobacco tax collection in our territory? Thank you.
Thank you. I don’t think you’re ever going to get away from potential variation. For example, we believe, and we have some of the numbers to show us, that there has been a significant switch from rolled cigarettes to loose tobacco because it’s considerably cheaper. Our cigarettes are the second highest in the county. We do our utmost to check and keep track of contraband cigarettes, counterfeit cigarettes as well. So we’re always going to have some variation. Plus we’re spending a considerable amount of money as a government trying to get people to quit smoking and that shows some signs of success in certain age demographics. So we are always going to have that kind of variability, I believe. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
