Merci, Monsieur le President. Confusion continues to reign for northern taxpayers despite the Canada Revenue Agency having finally published lowest airfare rates for the Northern Resident Travel Deduction. The deduction is set by regulation and has been in place since 1987 with continuous problems ever since.
I've been raising this issue for years in this House, trying to get successive territorial finance ministers, to step up and work with the other territorial finance ministers to slay this dragon.
After a CBC story about how Northerners were being audited three times as much as our southern friends, the then federal minister of national revenue promised to look into it and fix it. There was even a public consultation on setting lowest return airfare amounts that closed in April 2019. Fast forward to almost four years later and viola, the Canada Revenue Agency then posts 14 lessthanuser friendly tables for taxpayers to sort through to get numbers that don't actually make sense.
The CRA figures were apparently developed with a business travel service provider. I'm only going to pick on Yellowknife, but the CRA figures are as much as $160 higher in one case but mostly much lower, as much as $660 lower than comparable figures published by a local air carrier. I am going to use my crystal ball and predict that Northerners are again going to be subjected to unnecessary and unfair tax audits as a result of these discrepancies.
I've asked our NWT Member of Parliament for some help in terms of understanding this mess. The last time I raised the issue in the House was February 2021, and the finance Minister said, quote, "I'm happy to commit to checking in with my colleagues in Nunavut and Yukon to see if there is an issue that is of shared interest to us and to then consider whether or not a joint letter would be appropriate, but I'll make that initial engagement first." I'll have questions for the finance minister as to what this government is going to do slay the lowestreturnairfare dragon to help northern taxpayers. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Frame Lake. Members' statements. Member for Hay River South.
