Robert C. McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am here to present Bill 42. This piece of legislation, along with Bill 43, are critical pieces of legislation will allow the Government of the Northwest Territories to meet its carbon pricing commitment under the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change through a carbon tax on all petroleum and natural gas fuels, except aviation fuel.

The purpose of Bill 42 is to amend the Petroleum Products Tax Act to create the carbon tax on petroleum products and natural gas so that the collection and administration of the carbon tax is the same as the current fuel...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. You know, I speak Beaudel English, but I still don't think that I need an interpreter. I said that I would assume that the next government coming in would repeal the legislation if the federal legislation approves our appeal. I said I would assume that they would, based on the effect that it is having on of people in the Northwest Territories. It was an assumption, and they would make that decision. Thank you.

ENR doesn't actually issue these permits. This is done through Environment and Climate Change Canada. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We don't know what the federal backstop would look like for the Northwest Territories. That is a better backstop for the Yukon. Ours may have been different. We don't know that. Realizing that the federal backstop was going to be a little harder for the people of the Northwest Territories to swallow, we wanted to work on an approach that we believe was fairer to the people in the Northwest Territories. I will go to Mr. Stewart to reply to some of the Member's concerns with the numbers. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Speaker, challenges with the functionality of the Fur Harvest Management System has resulted in issues with the overall program administration, including manually calculating the accurate grubstake payments and reconciling auction payments for the trappers. We take these issues very seriously, and we are working to address them in a timely manner. ENR is actually working with Finance to make changes to the Fur Harvest Management System. ENR has made the first round of changes, and a working group has been established to resolve major issues by the fall of 2019. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I never thought of that, but I know of a community that does fly a lot of their fuel in, and I don't think you'd want to be paying the prices they pay, and their distance is not as far as the Member's riding. So I have seen that, and that is a creative way of looking at it, but the airline would still have to recover some of their costs, and I do know of a community in Northern Yukon that pays an extremely high cost for their gasoline. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The reason we are here having this discussion on the carbon pricing and our approach to carbon pricing which would help mitigate the impact on people in the Northwest Territories is because we have already asked the federal government to give us an exemption. Because we are here, you know what their answer was. They were bent on implementing carbon pricing; it does not matter which part of the country you lived in. So the initial discussion we had with the federal government is we just want to be exempt, and, of course, their answer was no. They said, "You guys go back...

Mr. Speaker, revenue forecasts were developed for the project that were projected to increase over time. Revenue has grown at a pace of around 20 percent a year since the inception of the Mackenzie fibre optic line in 2017, and has met its projected forecast. With the recent approvals related to the Inuvik satellite station, I expect there will be more interest and, coming from small communities such as Inuvik, we see that interest firsthand. Finance continues to work with the federal government on the development of a satellite station facility to further increase revenue. Thank you, Mr...

I would be interested to hear from some of the smaller communities down the valley to see if their services have improved at all. We know of the federal announcement where they have committed a whole bunch of money to improving broadband in northern communities, and I think our service providers up here was able to take advantage of some of that. We own Mackenzie Valley fibre optic line. I think we're responsible for getting it out to pop-out, as it's called in the community, and then their service provider would go from there.

Again, Mr. Speaker, we shouldn't be throwing around promises. I don...

These initiatives, they are related. The Property Tax Arrears program will help residents that have built up appears in the past. It is a time-limited program, however, to deal with these circumstances. Going forward, the standard interest rate establishes a more reasonable interest rate on any outstanding amounts owed to the GNWT in property taxes. These two initiatives taken together should help address the historic problem we have had with property tax arrears. That said, though, residents will have to pay their property taxes, and, if they do not, the arrears will start to grow again over...