Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to return to carbon pricing and the home heating exemptions. So the Minister said that there's no need to backdate the exemption because residents have received their rebates. So can the Minister confirm that a hundred percent of the fuel charge related to home heating fuel related to the carbon tax in the Northwest Territories is being rebated to Northerners, a hundred percent? Thank you.
Thank you, Member for Range Lake. Minister of Finance.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So, Mr. Speaker, firstly, the carbon tax rebates goes to those who are tax filers. So I would encourage everyone, even if they're getting rebates, even if they don't think they have to pay taxes on whatever they're receiving, they should be filing their taxes or at least filing a notice of tax with the government, and then that would give them, first of all, access to these rebates and, I believe, probably others, such as the child care or child rebates. But, Mr. Speaker, what the carbon tax offset payments by the Government of the Northwest Territories does is there's three parts to it. The first one looks at the cost of fuel, the cost of tax on fuel not associated to home heating, then there's an indirect taxes that we calculated based on what is estimated businesses would be charged and paying for carbon tax on their various forms of fuel usage knowing that that might well be passed down to consumers, and then the third currently in place is for the tax on home heating fuel paid by an average household, and that's at this present time is still based on the use of heating oil. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So, Mr. Speaker, I'm not sure I heard a clear answer, but I'll ask what is that number; what is the amount of revenue, tax revenue is being collected off home heating oil in the Northwest Territories? Thank you.
Sorry, Mr. Speaker. If it's the amount of home heating fuel home heating oil revenue, I can certainly get that number for the Member. For the current year, that's the taxation just to be clear, so I can get the correct information, it's the tax the number I'm going to get is the tax being collected for home heating fuel in the Northwest Territories. We can certainly provide that in due course. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So I suppose if Northerners have already received their rebates, this isn't going to make a difference. If our system's already taking care of home heating fuel carbon taxes, why are we exempting this? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it is arguably more convenient for residents to not have to pay the tax at the front end and to simply then to have that exempted from them rather than to have to get the rebate. That was certainly the source of much debate at the last time. And so given that that's now the approach that's being taken by many other jurisdictions due to the federal government's change, we were prepared to offer the same type of approach under our system so that the tax rebate or the tax itself on heating oil is not to be paid, won't have to be paid at the front end, and there will still be some heating or rather tax rebate being provided by the GNWT but adjusted to the fact that, as I've said, that heating oil component will now be exempted. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister of Finance. Final supplementary. Member for Range Lake.
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So I won't weigh into what I think of our system, but I think we can do some improvement here. My question is the federal government has also doubled the rural rebate supplement for Canadians under the climate action payment systems, the one that's administered by the federal government. Have we also doubled any of our or increased our COLO payments to follow suit and make sure that we're benefitting people who are paying in rural or remote areas for our high cost of fuel? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, our residents were already receiving a much higher rebate than what many residents in other parts of the country were. What we did in our system was, and what we understood would not have been offered had we come under the federal modeling, was to zone the three types of rebates that were being received. And under the home heating oil tax situation, that meant that those living in zone C who were really in some of the communities that are the most remote, most rural, they would have been receiving a much higher benefit to account for the fact that the amount of carbon tax paid on their home heating was much higher. So that is how we adjusted our system to account for that. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister of Finance. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife Centre.
