Tom Beaulieu

We do try to buy fuel, heating fuel, motor fuel and gasoline at the lowest possible price. We do make a call on the price of gasoline. We do buy mid-grade gasoline. It’s very important to the communities to have gasoline that doesn’t de-grade. If we buy low-grade gasoline, which is four cents a litre cheaper, the communities also realize that sometimes when we buy a lower grade gasoline there have been issues with snowmobiles and boat motors and so on. When people are out on the land, it’s essential that they have good gas, so we do pay four cents a litre more for that, but we do try to get...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The plan is to chipseal the highway. I’m very familiar with the product the Member speaks of. There was no discussion between the government and the industry that would provide Easy Street on that highway at this time. I think we are in a contract that says that we will be chipsealing the highway. If the company decides that they would put a different application on there within the same dollar amount, then perhaps the government and industry could sit down together and discuss that possibility. But moving forward, our intention is to chipseal at this time.

Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. The biggest contributor to the increase of heating fuel has been the wholesale cost of fuel. The wholesale cost of fuel over a 12-month period from early 2013 to early 2014 was 20 cents a litre. That is the price increase of the wholesale price when we purchased it Edmonton, and somehow that contributed to, for example, an increase of 17 cents a litre in Yellowknife.

The money that is put in here is a carry-over from an agreed contracted amount between the Department of Public Works and the contractor that did the work. As far as the government is concerned, we have a contract in place. There is a commitment on the part of the company to complete that road 100 percent according to the contract that they have in place, and our intention to do that.

All the highways in the NWT that are public highways are safe, as is this bypass road.

Mr. Speaker, the department was seeing the cost of advertising escalating every year. Since we’ve gone to this system in October, we are able to stabilize the cost and we are within that cost and we’re not increasing the budget to add on some of the jobs. This is something that was discussed between our department and the papers.

Right now a lot of what we’re doing with advertising, we’re doing a lot of generic advertising. All the departments are cost-sharing, so we’re getting economies of scale on that. So that’s one of the ways that we’re bringing the costs down in that area in order to pay...

As I indicated to the Member, I am sure that if the northern union wanted to put this on the table the next time around, it would be something that government would certainly discuss. At this time there’s a pre-determined agreement on the methodology that we’ve applied. We’ve applied the methodology to 22 of the 34 communities that are under this agreement and have increased. So we must recognize that this was a give and take and that there are some increases and some decreases. I also recognize that the cost is high, but this is something again that was pre-determined, agreed to the...

I should have been clearer in my response. I apologize for that. What I was indicating was that it is a negotiated item, so it was agreed to. The methodology was agreed to and it’s been left up to the Government of the Northwest Territories to do the annual adjustments. The northern living allowance was not an item that was on the negotiating table. The last time we negotiated an agreement with the Union of Northern Workers, they felt that they were more interested in the salary portion of it, the increase in the salaries, and they were satisfied with how the northern living allowance was...

Mr. Speaker, if that is internationally to lower the cost across the board, then our government is prepared to look at that particular tax for fuel into small communities that we’re delivering ourselves. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, petroleum products operate through a revolving fund. There’s a Revolving Fund Act, which means that the fund itself is self-funding. So the only way that we’re able to deliver fuel to these communities is by charging what it costs to deliver fuel to the communities.

If we were to subsidize one community, which we are allowed to do up to 95 percent of the cost, we would have to take it from another community. We’re allowed to charge up to 105 percent of the cost of delivering fuel to a community.

We try to keep it fairly balanced and do it at the true cost, 100 percent of the cost...