Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the Liquor Act review would be a substantial one. It hasn't been changed for a number of years. There was an exercise done through the 12th Assembly and the changes were not incorporated at that time. That bill did not proceed, so we are looking at a fairly extensive review through this process. There hasn't been any money allocated at this time for that review. Through the previous Assembly, there was some money spent on doing the initial work to look at what could be incorporated in that. That amount has been financed from within internal allocations, so there hasn't been any money set aside for this. The work that's been done has been done from internal resources and there hasn't been any money incorporated for the review process itself. Thank you.
Debates of March 18th, 2004
This is page numbers 47 - 84 of the Hansard for the 15th Assembly, 3rd Session. The original version can be accessed on the Legislative Assembly's website or by contacting the Legislative Assembly Library. The word of the day was federal.
Topics
Item 20: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
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Item 20: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
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Item 20: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
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Paul Delorey Hay River North
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would certainly encourage the department to do everything they can from internal sources to look at the problem areas in the Liquor Act and see what changes we can make. I know that a lot of the things that are in the Liquor Act now probably would have a lot more impact on residents just if they were enforced. We hear about it on the radio quite often now where they are starting to enforce the Liquor Act a little bit more to establishments that serve alcoholic beverages and that sort of thing. I don't think we have to go to multi hundred thousand dollar reviews to make some of the changes that might help.
The other part is as far as educating the public, I don't know if a review of the Liquor Act would do that. We can probably put a lot more pressure on the education system or Health and Social Services because that's probably where the education end of it would come anyway. I would certainly like to be involved in looking at what's wrong with the Liquor Act before we go into a review that's going to cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
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Item 20: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
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Floyd Roland Inuvik Boot Lake
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As our process works, we would come forward to Cabinet with what we felt was needed and if it was agreed at that point, we would go to committee and see if that is something committee Members agreed to move forward and proceed on that basis. If there is not support for such an intensive review, then those comments would come back to us and we would look at the issue again within Cabinet. But we haven't gotten to the stage yet of even a proposal. It's just some work going on to look at areas and how we can begin to tackle this process. Thank you.
Item 20: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Item 20: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
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The Chair David Ramsay
Thank you, Mr. Minister. It's about five minutes to 6:00 and I don't know what the wish of the committee is. We have a few more minutes here, we have two other speakers on our list. We can start with Mr. Hawkins, and then I have Mr. Yakeleya and we will try to conclude this. Is that the wish of committee? Agreed?
Item 20: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
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Some Hon. Members
Agreed.
Item 20: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
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Item 20: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
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Robert Hawkins Yellowknife Centre
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Referring to page 3-20 under other income, $180,000, we see quite a substantial change. Could the Minister supply me with some information on a breakdown in that regard? Thank you very much.
Item 20: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
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Item 20: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
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Floyd Roland Inuvik Boot Lake
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We can endeavour to get that information for the Member. I believe the majority of that is related to the recycling initiative. Right now we do have a fee that we charge to customers that buy our products, and that's the money that's accounted for. Just for information, the numbers that we do have come out of the Liquor Commission report and would refer to 2003 numbers. So we wouldn't be able to give the absolute number for this year, but it's an estimate that they feel that will come up. There are some for import permits identified in the 2003 number. The bottle deposit program is $76,000...No, I don't think that's right. We're going to have to get the numbers and provide them to the Member. What I have here is not accurate. Thank you.
Item 20: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
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Item 20: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
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Robert Hawkins Yellowknife Centre
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Speaking on that note, I do appreciate the fact of the breakdown of what other income means, as well as the actual breakout of the numbers, but you did bring me to another subject under other income when you referred to the deposit of bottles. I assume the deposit of the bottles, that fee goes back into a fund that pays out people when they return the bottles. Is that correct?
Item 20: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
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Item 20: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
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Floyd Roland Inuvik Boot Lake
Sorry, Mr. Chairman. I will have Ms. Melhorn respond to that as I wasn't able to catch the full question.
Item 20: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
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Melhorn
Thank you. There isn't a separate fund kept, but just the money is refunded to those who bring the bottles back.
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Robert Hawkins Yellowknife Centre
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That's good news. Who maintains ownership of the bottles once the
money has been refunded? Who retains ownership once the bottles are returned for money? Thank you.
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Item 20: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
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Floyd Roland Inuvik Boot Lake
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Once the bottles are returned to the depot, they would be the property of the depot they were returned to. The allocation, from my understanding, is broken out from there and divvied up amongst the communities that have the depots. They receive the bottles and would either crush them at their locations or send them south to further recycling. Thank you.
Item 20: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
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Item 20: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
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Robert Hawkins Yellowknife Centre
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Maybe if the Minister could elaborate a little further, and I'll set this out clearly so I completely get a good picture of this. As I see it, we get a deposit on the bottle, the bottle goes out, gets returned, the deposit is returned to the customer who returns the bottle, but we leave the bottles with the depot. Do we pay the depots a contracting fee, is that why we leave them the bottles? I would think that we would take the bottles and do something with them if that's the case. How does the depot make their money? Do we pay them separately on contract and the bottles become an extra? I'm looking for a little clarity on that one. Thank you.
Item 20: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
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Item 20: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
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Floyd Roland Inuvik Boot Lake
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, my understanding of the process is we offer contracts to depots for that operation, but then they also receive the bottles and can pay out the fees that they would earn from those collections. They collect the bottles, get a fee at the local depot, and then would pay the group that brought that forward and then would send their product on. Again, through our organization, they would get some funding for that. Thank you.