Agreed.

---Agreed

Line By Line

Directorate

Agreed.

---Agreed

Community Works And Capital Planning

Agreed.

---Agreed

Community Planning

Agreed.

---Agreed

Surveys And Mapping

Agreed.

---Agreed

Sport And Recreation

Agreed.

---Agreed

Municipal Operations And Assessment

I just have one question to do with assessment in the city of Yellowknife. There have been some problems with controversy over the years between some of the

downtown business people and city council. There has been some controversy about the actual assessed value of land downtown. This has gone on for a number of years and has caused quite a bit of concern. I just wonder if the Minister could give me an update. There has been a number of appeals, discussions, assessment board rulings, et cetera. So the situation is confusing. Is there any clarity that we can look forward to receiving?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have heard of the difficulty Mr. Ballantyne is referring to. However, I don't know the details of the particular problems. I will ask Mr. Menard to answer the question.

There were quite a few issues mentioned by the Member, Mr. Chairman. I will address some of them. One of the main ones is that there is a lot of confusion within the public on assessments, but more than that, on the taxation side which is land classification, et cetera. We recently met with the city of Yellowknife and we are now going to look at a new way to do assessments in Yellowknife and we are going to try to use northern costs instead of southern costs. We met with the director of finance recently and we set up a committee. Hopefully, in the new year, in the tax year 1995, we will have a new basis for assessments which will eliminate many different classifications of land. It will equalize things better for the city of Yellowknife and it will probably be a model we will use in other tax-based municipalities in the north. So we are going to be developing a northern cost instead of an Edmonton cost factored up. So we are progressing very well in that area.

As for the process of appeals, we had a situation recently, which was an oversight on MACA's part, no doubt about that, and it had to do with classification, not assessment. It was also the city's oversight because they had three opportunities to check it and so did we. It was also an oversight on the taxpayer. So we will be looking at the process again to make sure we don't miss these things when the reviews take place. That is why there is a process like that. The process is outlined in the legislation that says the taxing authority has so many days to review the assessment role and the taxpayer also has a chance to review his assessment and his tax bill. In this case, it was missed by everyone. We are committed to sit down with the three parties together to try to resolve this the best way we can. But it has been a difficult area to deal with in the city because the city is different. Maybe it is the size or type of buildings. When we deal with the building cost, it will stabilize the land cost because the shift won't be as great from one commodity to the other. So we hope we can resolve those issues.

I thank the deputy minister for that. I take it then, Mr. Minister, we have a commitment that if there were problems in the past caused by oversights on the part of MACA or the city that the department will work at resolving those and that we can look forward in the future to a new system which will mean we can avoid these sorts of problems.

I will tell the Minister there has been an ongoing debate in this city about assessed values of the downtown as opposed to the large developments out in the suburbs of the city. There is a strong school of thought that it is not a level playing field. There have been court cases and numerous appeals. It gets to the very fundamental basis of how a city can operate and how a business community can thrive. If the Minister could give the commitment that the problems in the past will be resolved and that working with all parties, we hope to devise a system that will avoid these problems in the future.

Yes, Mr. Chairman. We will work on it.

Agreed.

---Agreed

Lands