Thank you. Minister.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just a couple of questions and, I mean, the Minister and I have had conversations about this before. One of the things that I am finding increasingly frustrating lately is when I go and talk to another Minister about integrated service delivery and the barriers to being able to provide integrated service delivery to Northerners because of our systems that we use within the government. And so I'm wondering if -- you know, we've got $21.8 million here in expenditures for this office, and I know that they do far more than just purchase software or, rather, manage the purchase of software. And so is there funding within here to work on an interoperability framework? Thank you.

Thank you. We will now turn to page 166, Office of the Chief Information Officer, with information items on page 167. Are there any questions? Member for Kam Lake.

Thank you. Are there any further questions to the management board secretariat from Members? Seeing none, please turn to page 161.

Finance, management board secretariat, operations expenditure summary, 2023-2024 Main Estimates, $110,692,000. Does committee agree?

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, there are costs associated with having the Canada Revenue Agency administering our tax collection in general. So I don't know that this is necessarily unique or distinct. The reality is it would cost a significant amount of money for the GNWT to do that and human resources capacity. And if they didn't do it, we'd have to do it. So it's sort of a one way or the other. It might actually be more expensive for us to have to start up our own entire tax collection and administration system. CRA is actually a fairly large -- I think surprisingly large part of the federal government that might just sort of swing under the radar. But I don't have their budgets in front of me nor do I intend to defend them, but just to say that that part of ours is -- yes, it's something that has to happen one way or the other. Thank you.

Thank you. Minister.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I do appreciate that the Minister's a bit verbose but I did understand from the first sentence what the answer to my question was, so. I just want to -- one thing there that twigged me in that comment was the $700,000 to administer the program. So I have to say that feels like a bit of a kick in the teeth from the federal government. Not only are we imposing this all on you, we're now going to charge you another $700,000 to administer it for you. So is there any opportunity perhaps for us to go back to the feds and just say, please, at the very least remove the $700,000 admin fee and give that back to us? Thank you.

Thank you. Member for Great Slave.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So, again, it's federal government rules that we're working within and, you know, I'd like to suggest it's -- we're basically putting up a shield to try to ensure that the full force of what the federal government is doing doesn't impact residents and businesses in the Northwest Territories. The total grants and rebates that are proposed here are $47.18 million. There's also almost $700,000 that is required to administer the program largely through the Canada Revenue Agency. We don't have necessarily the manpower to do it but it does still come with a cost. And then the breakdown is we cannot rebate heating fuel anymore. So that's certainly a big one that we and other jurisdictions have been very vocal about but to no avail. And, yes, you cannot -- right now, people when they pay, when they're getting their heating fuel or whatever other sorts of fuel, it's right at the point of purchase. So at the pump so to speak. That is also not allowed anymore. You cannot negate the carbon signal meaning you can't make it seem to someone that they're not paying it when they're paying it. It is now needs to be apparent to a person that they're paying the tax even if we, as the GNWT, are going to try and step in and actually completely mitigate that tax later through the payment. At the front end, the federal government is saying they want people to know what they're paying. At the back end, we're saying we're going to prevent them from actually being impacted by it financially.

Now, look, one of the benefits of that is that it hopefully will motivate people to, in fact, take steps, whether it's through Arctic Energy Alliance or otherwise, to reduce GHG emissions. Then they get more money in their pocket when they get their cost of living offset. But it just means that you can't upfront know what -- you have to upfront know what you're paying. There, thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Minister.

Thank you. If I can come up with one that makes sense. I guess -- yeah, so my understanding is that we can't give back then the direct money to people at the -- or going forward, based on what the government is changing, but we can still give rebates and things under other programs; is that what the Minister's saying? Thank you.

Thank you. Member for Great Slave.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So the increase on expenditures here is the increase to the grants that are for various rebates benefits associated with offsetting. So there is the grant -- I mean, and this is, of course, all projected and premised on the notion that the -- what we anticipated in Bill 60 would pass which, you know, obviously is not -- is not guaranteed by any stretch. The largest amount would be for the large emitter program that we have, which is not a complete or a total remission of taxes paid by large emitters but only the amount that is planned for under the 72 percent. They right now pay roughly 50 percent of the tax as compared to other residents or businesses that are paying carbon taxes. There's also the rebate for the generation of electricity. There's the rebate for cost of living to individual residents. And so that -- yes, so that's the different pieces here. And, I mean, maybe I'll leave it to see what the next question might be, Madam Chair. Thank you.