Floyd Roland

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, the area of this supplementary appropriation, as the Member has highlighted…. As we’ve budgeted for the fiscal year, we set aside in our fiscal framework an amount of dollars for supplementary appropriation. At times over the last number of years we’ve…. In fact, the Government of the Northwest Territories has gone over that initial amount.

This year, after being elected and starting to put the budget together, we took the $25 million initially allocated for the supplementary appropriation, and based on the drawdown or a percentage of the drawdown from departments...

Mr. Chairman, to my right is the secretary to the Financial Management Board, Ms. Kathleen LeClair, and to my left is Mr. Charles Tolley, manager of budget development.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 1, 2008–2009, requests authority for additional appropriations of $50.317 million for operations expenditures and $106.345 million for capital investment expenditures in the 2008–2009 fiscal year.

To clarify the contents of the bill, the $48.4 million of operation expenditure appropriations includes $15.6 million offset by federal revenues and $32 million for contribution funding for the continuation of community infrastructure projects not completed in the 2007–2008 fiscal period. Funding for these projects was approved and lapsed...

I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Thebacha, that Bill 18, Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 1, 2008–2009, be read for the first time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

First of all, I will sit down with the department to get the latest update as to what’s happening and sit down with the Members as to where things are and what options may be available to us. Then we’ll decide at that point what next steps we may be taking. If it’s a meeting of that nature, then we will take that into consideration. The first step is to get the latest update and sit down with the Members.

Until I get a recent update as to what the state of the situation is in the community of Hay River, we’re being careful as to our involvement. The fact is that the Government of the Northwest Territories’ process has been on existing facilities and, as old contracts ended, on looking at new contracts for efficiencies. We have to look at a combined services retail storage facility, thereby saving some of the cost of having separate facilities. That’s the process we look at to continue. Our preference would be to continue with that path. The RFP proved a result, and we’re hoping that things will...

Mr. Speaker, the initial payroll tax was established at 1 per cent. Once you paid out the cost of living tax credit to Northerners, the net was very small indeed. Going to 2 per cent has netted the Government of the Northwest Territories more revenue on the general revenue side, and as we would highlight in our budget — I don’t have the specific numbers at this time, but we’ll get that — I know it has increased. There is a more substantial amount that does remain with the Government of the Northwest Territories.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As we initially sat down, we looked at a number of tax options that were available to us. The payroll tax is one factor. On the other side, as the Member has mentioned, the cost of living tax credit is also available to Northerners. There was some adjustment a number of years ago, in line with the changes. We’d be prepared, as we’re talking about launching a discussion paper on tax options in the Northwest Territories…. We’re going to Members with that and then going out to the public for some discussion and debate around those issues. We could include this area into...

I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Deh Cho, that Bill 9, Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 4, 2007–2008, be read for the third time.

In the area of new legislation one of the things we have to do as a government is look at the area of authority that we have when it comes to legislation. We have to also recognize the Constitution of Canada and the process involved to have our jurisdiction status changed. As well, we know that sometimes we have to be careful what we ask for. If we ask for status, for example, to be equal to a province, there are some other issues we will have to deal with as residents of the Northwest Territories. So it’s more than just saying, “Stand up and enact something.” In fact, we must do the proper...