Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to talk about the carbon tax. The carbon tax government revenue option paper in 2008 indicated that the GNWT, when they did the assessment stating that carbon tax would increase the cost of living in the Northwest Territories. This goes contrary to one of our goals to reduce the cost of living in the Northwest Territories. I want to ask the Minister of ENR with the carbon tax that is coming up for some discussions here, we need to protect seniors and low-income residents and recognize the regional cost of living. How is the Minister going to propose to look at supporting our goal but also looking at this issue here where it says it is going to increase the cost of living?
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The intent has been and continues to be right from the start, that any taxes that we were looking at, but in this particular case, the carbon tax, it was premised on the assumption that we would be looking at it within the context of making it revenue neutral so it didn’t raise the cost of living. It would look at dealing with carbon emissions and such but making very carefully structured if it was going to be considered, but it was always within the context in the North. Anything we do with taxes, anything we do in terms of revenue generation, we have to be very sensitive to the issue of driving up costs, especially in the smaller communities. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, the cost of the carbon tax, I am having a hard time because in our region, we depend on fossil fuel. We do not have a hydro facility like some of the other regions. The cost of living is very high. My people depend on fossil fuel, so this would bring the costs up in my region. How is the Minister going to look at it if it is being considered to bring in the carbon tax and how do we look at some regions and communities that fully depend on fossil fuel?
Mr. Speaker, first, to reassure the Member, tomorrow we are going to give third reading to the budget bill and it is going to get assent by the Commissioner. In that bill, there are no new taxes.
There is work being done, as we discussed it in the House today with Member for Weledeh, in terms of the Greenhouse Gas Strategy. There was a roundtable held by the group Mr. Bromley was part of on looking at having further discussions on the carbon tax. All that work is going to be pulled together and it will be there for the consideration for the 17th Assembly and then there will be very careful consideration as there was, for example, during the Electrical Rate Review. We tried to come up with a way that is sensitive to the differences in Electrical Rate Review case between thermal communities and hydro communities, small communities and large communities. I am assuming the 17th Assembly would fully follow that same type of process. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, with our small population, compared to the province of Alberta, I want to ask the Minister, does it make sense to have any type of carbon tax in the Northwest Territories going forward in the 17th?
Mr. Speaker, the issue of our carbon emissions targets taxes has to be seen within the broader context in which we are trying to do through the Greenhouse Gas Strategy and the recognition that we all see as Northerners, the majority of us Northerners see of the rapid and dramatic and visible effect of climate change and what is driving that climate change in terms of world population and, of course, the anthropogenic or human-caused emissions.
In the North, we are very carbon dependent, as the Member indicated. The question is, what do we do in order to be responsible citizens of the country of the North, of the globe, to deal with those emissions which we know are, in fact, aggravating and leading to some of the problems that are facing us with permafrost, with climate change, with ice melting, extreme weather events, diminished snow caps, water flows, all of these types of things. We have to look at it within that broad context and have the discussion of how do we collectively put our minds to do all the right things and to bring in the resources to do those things. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I had indicated before, our region is very dependent on carbon and fossil fuel. Mr. Speaker, we do not have the luxury of having hydro power in our communities. Just recently INAC issued one of the largest land bids in the Northwest Territories: 11 parcels. There are a few more up in the Beaufort-Delta. We depend on fossil fuel in the Sahtu. Until we see some hydro initiatives coming into the Sahtu to lower our costs and to look at carbon tax, I cannot support this carbon tax issue right now. What is the Minister doing on a going forward basis to show that we are bringing down our cost of living in the Northwest Territories?
Mr. Speaker, the most immediate example I can give is the electrical rate restructure was done that, in fact, lowered the price of commercial power in the Member’s communities in his riding by many cases 30, 40 or 50 percent and would have, in our hope and our plan, to have an effect on the food basket costs. That is probably one of the single biggest things in the life of this Assembly that has been done, an issue that has bedevilled Assemblies since before the 13th Assembly where we have tried to deal with the issue of the power rates to push for a one-rate zone but that particular decision had a dramatic impact in terms of the cost of commercial power, for example, in thermal communities. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Kam Lake, Mr. Ramsay.
