Floyd Roland

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Member has an amazing ability to be able to rewrite what's been said in this House, or responses. Yesterday, in response to his questions, I stated quite clearly that as direct appointments, a tool that we do have available to us, they're outside of the affirmative action policy. But the affirmative action policy is used in the ranking of a decision that is made. It is a tool. Direct appointments are a tool that we have and the government has, as past governments have, made priorities of people we will hire within the government: graduates from our...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the fact is, and we've agreed that there needs to be work done around our hiring practices within the Government of the Northwest Territories. We've committed to doing that and bringing a paper forward for this Assembly to review, the Members and our government, to improve on a number of areas. As the Member's well aware, we've just done the human resources amalgamation, and getting those processes, our normal processes, in working order so that we can do an effective job with our staff today. We haven't had the opportunity to deal with these issues the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the problem arises when we have an individual or, in this case, elders who would come to work for a school board or an agency and they would only come as and when, once every few weeks, once a month or maybe even less than that, depending on what information they were going to provide. That is a difficult portion because our systems right now, as we run our payroll system, do not adequately address that. That is an issue. We have been trying to work with Education around this area to accommodate the request. Part of the problem, as we work our system...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, we’ll get those numbers. Right now my understanding from the estimates I have is the Alberta government’s small business tax rate is three percent. We’re at four percent. So we’ll provide that information.

Mr. Speaker, energy costs are a concern to all of us. The Department of Public Works and Services has an opportunity to test a cheaper alternative energy source this coming year at the North Slave Correctional Centre.

Public Works and Services and the Department of Justice recently received a proposal from a Yellowknife-based company, Arctic Green Energy, to provide a wood pellet boiler system at the North Slave Correctional Centre.

Providing heat for buildings using wood pellet boilers has been common practice in Europe for decades, with systems reliably heating numerous facilities such as...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Should I just say yes, I understood the question and go from there? The fact is, yes, we do recognize the impacts of the high cost of living on the Northwest Territories small businesses. That is why there has been a steady trend since the 1990s when the small business tax rate was in fact in the area of 10 percent and the last reduction I believe happened in 2003 when we reduced it from five to four percent. With the changes in the federal government, there will be an impact to this government’s revenues because of the amount of tax applied to the small business. The...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as a government we’re always willing to look at suggestions of possibilities here and I would hope that when we bring forward the employment equity policy here for discussion with Members, that we will have a good dialogue on what options are out there and opportunities that we can improve on our hiring practices as a government. So, yes, we’re willing to look and sit down and discuss what options we might be able to implement as we move forward.

The other issue is, just for the record, Mr. Speaker, when we use direct appointments as a way of putting people...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the fact is, as a representative government, I can’t defend what previous governments did or did not do. The fact is that when Ministers bring forward a request for direct appointment, it’s tied to some of our other initiatives. For example, when we talk about graduates from our Nursing Program, our Social Work Program, as well as some of the teachers, and as well the internship program that we have of people who’ve gone to school, receive some training in their area and have worked within the department for a year or so, we’ve used that tool as an avenue...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the way our tax system works, all corporations in the Northwest Territories are eligible for the small business tax rate up to $300,000. In this case, now up to $400,000. So we’d have to provide information on all corporations in the Northwest Territories, not just those that had less income and only qualified for the small tax rate. We could maybe sit down with the Member and try to get more specific to what questions or answers she’d like to see in that area instead of providing a whole slew of information that might not be too useful. I’ll gladly sit...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there are a number of issues that would come up just sitting here thinking about it. So instead of getting into that detail in this forum and possibly making some errors in the response, what I would suggest is that I know there’s been ongoing discussions and we’ve had some meetings in the past, I will direct people from within our payroll systems to meet with the agency and try to come up with something that’s appropriate. Part of it could be, as I said, simply a matter of knowing in advance who is going to be working for what time period and that would...