Masi. Minister Robert C. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I believe that, through the process that we go through in the Legislative Assembly with the business planning process and budget planning debate on the floor of this House, I think we've gone to improve the transparency within the Department of Finance and there are a number of other - in our meetings with Regular Members we continue to keep them updated as to some of the initiatives we have on the go, and as far as the financial administration, a lot of the departments, when they come forward, when their requests are reviewed by our policy analysts over at Finance, there's always a question there of whether it abides with the Financial Administration Act. So we continue to do the work to be as transparent as possible and to keep this House informed as to all that's going on within the Department of Finance. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Masi. Questions for Ministers. Next on my list, I have Member O'Reilly.

Merci, Monsieur le President. My question is for the Minister of Finance. For at least the last two years, and probably longer, GNWT has raised more money from taxes on alcohol and tobacco than we get to keep from resource revenues as a result of devolution. Rather than get into a debate about what other benefits we may be getting from resource development, I want the Minister to discuss what he has done with regard to tax fairness and what he intends to do in the remainder of our term on tax fairness. Mahsi, Mr. Chair.

Masi. Minister Robert C. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, with the discussions we have in this House all the time about the cost of living across the NWT, I think one of the biggest accomplishments for tax fairness across the Northwest Territories is the fact that we haven't raised personal tax for years and have people pay for some of the challenges that we have been facing, because we all recognize that there is a high cost of living in the Northwest Territories. We do review our taxes; I think we made a couple of recommendations through our business planning process that we've gone through, but we will continue to ensure that the taxes are fair for all residents across the NWT. Again, I remind Members that one thing we do not want to do is increase personal income tax and have that burden beared by the residents of the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Masi. Questions for Ministers. Next on my list, I have Member Testart.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. There is a mandate commitment to lower taxes on small businesses. At this point two years into our term, no progress has been made on that that I have seen, or that the standing committees have seen. Can the Minister of Finance indicate when he is going to be prepared to either table a tax plan, or share a tax proposal with Members of this House on lowering taxes for small business, or somehow reducing the tax burden on northern businesses? Many of these businesses in Yellowknife are located in my riding, and they depend on government spending and government support. We put that tax plan in the mandate to do exactly that, to support those businesses and make sure they have a competitive edge when competing against larger southern contractors. This is an important part of our mandate. We have seen no progress to date. I would like to know when the Minister is going to have something to share with us? Thank you.

Minister Robert C. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, the Member is correct. It was one of the mandate items that we will reduce taxes on small businesses. We have four years of this Assembly. We still have two years left in our mandate, and we have looked at it a couple of times. I think it was a 1 per cent decrease to taxes of small business. I think that was the number that was thrown around. At this point, it is a relatively small impact on the road to do business across the Northwest Territories, and we believe that there are better ways to support small business across the NWT. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Masi. Questions for Ministers. Next on my list, I have Member Green.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, my question is for the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment. There is language in the mandate about diversifying the NWT economy beyond the traditional pillars of mining, and oil and gas, into areas such as tourism, agriculture, filmmaking and so on. In order to develop these alternatives as solid contributors to our GDP, we need investment, yet investments in the last budget were modest at just $12.5 million in total. My question to the Minister is: what is he waiting for? Thank you.

Masi. Minister Schumann.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. A number of these initiatives, the commercial fishing strategy, the agriculture strategy, these things, we are moving these forward. Particularly, the agriculture strategy, we have laid out the first one for the Northwest Territories. It is a blueprint for moving this forward. We want to help develop and implement the agriculture strategy. As I have said, this is a blueprint that we have laid out. There are actions that have to be taken to move this thing along. We have a working group with the Department of Health and Social Services; Lands; ENR, to move that one along. The fishing strategy, we are in conversation with the fishing federation. We have to make a decision at some point if we are going to stay involved in that or not. We are creating a marketing plan for exporting fish out of the Northwest Territories, so there are a number of things that has to be done. The groundwork has to be laid out before we can just start throwing money at these things, so we are doing our homework to find what is the best way to move these initiatives forward, and we will continue to do that. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Masi. Questions for Ministers. Next on my list, I have Member O'Reilly.

Merci, Monsieur le President. My question is for the Minister responsible for the Public Utilities Board. We have this weird situation, Mr. Chair, where we now have deputy ministers sitting as the board of the Northwest Territories Power Corporation, so we have some control over what they propose to the Public Utilities Board. We also appoint the Public Utilities Board, and we also provide direction to them. The last time the Minister provided direction to the Public Utilities Board came completely out of the blue. Regular Members had no idea that this was going to happen. It is just a very unusual situation. I am hoping the Minister can help me understand what his vision is for the future of the Public Utilities Board is over the next two years? Mahsi, Mr. Chair.

Masi. Minister Abernethy.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Public Utilities Board has a very important role in reviewing the rates that different energy providers and distributors want to charge residents across the Northwest Territories. That is the Power Corp. as well as other organization like NUL. There are more than one organization that they are reviewing the rates from. As long as there is multiple organizations, multiple power providers, I think it is in the best interests of the people of the Northwest Territories that we have this independent body reviewing the numbers that are being proposed by these different distributors and power providers.

At this point in time, there is no anticipation of removing the board or getting rid of the Public Utilities Board. As a note, Ministers have given direction to PUB in the past. We can give direction, general policy direction, not specific direction, but general policy direction prior to them going into reviews of different applications which is what we did in this case. I have answered questions to this effect to the Member previously. I, of course, would love to have been able to provide the Members more updates, but the information came to us that required a fairly quick decision. We made the decision and immediately gave the MLAs a heads up. We will certainly endeavor to give MLAs more heads up in the future because like I said before, I am not a big fan of surprises. Sometimes, situations do arise that need immediate response, and that was the situation in this particular case. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Masi. Questions for Ministers. Next on my list, I have Member Beaulieu.

Marsi cho, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Lands. Mr. Speaker, the land lease policies considered by committee to be a disruptive type of a policy. It is a policy where individuals need to have their land lease in order to apply for housing programs as an example, and other legal things that are needed for land; however, it is extremely high. I talked about this in the House, too. Some of the elders would be required to pay a huge amount. Elders have to apply for the small little programs through the Housing Corporation every year just to sort of bandage up their houses. I would like to ask the Minister if he has made any changes to the land lease policy so that it fits the economic realities of small communities? Thank you.

Masi. Minister Sebert.

Mr. Chair, there are really two types of leases the government is involved in, in the Northwest Territories. There are equity leases which I have referred to earlier, and I will be coming to Cabinet shortly with some options that will hopefully resolve that situation. With respect to the normal leases, the department looked at lease amounts that are charged elsewhere, and it was determined that a fair lease amount would be 10 per cent of the assessed value. Now, certain people such as elders do receive a discount of 50 per cent on that amount. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Masi. Questions for Ministers. Next on my list, I have Member Green.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, my question is for the Minister responsible for the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation. As we hear often in this House, the core housing need is 20 per cent, or almost 3,000 households in the NWT, and these problems encompass affordability, suitability, and adequacy. The Minister has committed to reduce the number of households in core need by 250 per year for the next three years, and I am wondering how that is going to work. Thank you.