Tom Beaulieu

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I move that Bill 30 be amended by

renumbering clause 5 as clause 5(1); and

adding the following after renumbered clause 5(1):

Subsection 34(8) is amended by striking out “the Minister” and substituting “the deputy minister of the department responsible for administration of this act.”

Sorry, Mr. Chairman, legislative counsel.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, I do.

The Stabilization Fund is there to stabilize the cost of fuel, that is correct; however, it is not there to provide subsidies. What the Member is asking for is for us to take a look at stabilizing at last year’s rate for an indefinite period of time, or six months, then what we would have to do is we would have to recover that cost at some point from somewhere. So, the only place where we have the ability to reduce the cost below the 100 percent is in Colville and Tsiigehtchic. Aside from that, other communities are too big, that once we start to provide any sort of percentage subsidy, it...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The cost of gasoline or diesel motives or heating oil is all based on the purchase costs, the transportation, the commission that it costs us to deliver from our tanks to the homes or the cost of administering what they have there, which we refer to as operations and maintenance as well. Also, we keep track of the product evaporation and taxes. That’s it; there’s no profit on any of the fuels that we sell. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to move a motion.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have with me, to my immediate right, Shirley Desjardins, deputy minister of Human Resources; on my far right, Nicole MacNeil, director of labour relations; and to my left, Ken Chutskoff, legal counsel.

The Member is correct that the wrong information and the wrong place was given out, and that was corrected. We had advised the community that that had occurred and we then issued the correct price to the community. However, again, it’s a fairly simple process that we have no ability to subsidize. Like I said to the Member, we do have an ability to stabilize the fund and that’s what we do, we try to stabilize the fund so that the constituents are not seeing sharp costs in fuel fluctuations in the cost of gasoline. So, I will check into exactly what had occurred, what type of information had...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The UNW was consulted and the NWTTA was not, but they have access to the public consultation process.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would reiterate again the clause that we’re changing, one term, that’s what the legislative proposal is, a term of changing in Section 27(3), changing from a person that is laid off to a person that’s affected by a layoff. This is the reason that we are here. In order to change this overall Public Service, which says “any position” to “vacant position,” we’d have to take this legislation to the union and we would have to consult and we would have to do further in-depth review of the Public Service Act.

What we’re doing here is changing one small clause. This is not...