Bob Bromley

Thank you for the comments from the Minister. I have spent a little time in that department in a past life and can appreciate the interest in utility for any surplus funds. Perhaps that’s an opportunity to look at sharing a surplus and rolling part of it into a fund, if that would be financially and administratively possible. So no question.

I assume there are no other remarks from the Minister on the likelihood of overcoming what’s left in the supplementary reserve this fiscal year.

I think the Minister semi-anticipated my next question. There are, as he mentioned, just less than a couple of weeks left. It happens to coincide almost with the federal election.

Are there any particular areas that our public should be aware of that you are interested in comments on that you have not heard from them on? This is an opportunity for our public to hear about that, and I think we’ve had some response on that. If there are any comments on how the public can best focus their comments on areas that might be most fruitful, this would be a good chance to hear about it. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister of Finance can stay standing if he’d like.

My question is on revenue options. Specifically, in this case, one of the things I always hear back when I’m trying to come up with innovative ideas is that the cost of tax collection is prohibitive. Right now the federal government collects our taxes for us. If we take it on, is the Minister investigating what the actual cost of that tax collection would be so that we can make an informed judgment on whether that’s a valid response or not?

I appreciate that offer. That sounds wonderful. The experience in other jurisdictions — and I want to stress that this has been done for millions of households, so this is off the shelf technology. But where it has been done for the first time, typically the utility or some powers that be end up putting barriers in place through, for example, requiring unrealistically expensive meters and so on. I wonder if we can expedite this process by just getting all the players together at the table. I think this is a modus operandi of this government.

Would the Minister be able to facilitate getting...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to follow up on my Member’s statement on the net metering issue. It involves, I believe, the Minister of ENR for renewable energy, the Minister of NTPC, Mr. Roland, and the Minister of PUB, Mr. McLeod. So I don’t have a druthers on who this is directed at, but I’d like to begin by finding out exactly what regulatory process is required to set up net metering for Yellowknife and the Northwest Territories.

Mr. Chair, I move that we rise and report progress.

Mr. Chair, I can’t let this go without commenting once again on what some of the potential savings are by looking at fuel alternatives and transportation alternatives. I realize this one is for the aviation facility. It’s very difficult to avoid for Yellowknife, but it does raise the cost of maintaining tank farms. I just wanted to raise that as something we should be on the watch for. I’m sure the Minister is.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a quick follow-up on Mr. Hawkins’ questions. Presumably there are years when there is a surplus, when there is what we would call a good fire season. What happens to that surplus, and is there a chance it could be rolled into a fund?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to follow up briefly on that one. I assume there will be other labour contracts that we’ll come upon from time to time, employee contracts. It is my understanding that we might have a couple more supplementary appropriations and obviously very little room now. These are issues that were, of course, raised at our first review of the budget. Decisions were made to decrease concerns about decreasing the supplementary reserve.

I would like to ask the Minister: did we in fact make an error? Should we bump it up to be able to recover these costs? Can we expect this...