Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just with respect to the Department of Public Works and Services, this department provides a lot of services to the communities I represent, as well as within Public Works and Services, we have the petroleum products division. Their headquarters is in Fort Simpson. People are very pleased that we do have that as a central office there. By far, the biggest concern that I have been hearing over the past year is, of course, the amount of fuel that people are getting in the communities. The biggest single concern is that fuel went in there last year but the price wasn't adjusted until July, so communities like Trout Lake and Nahanni Butte are saying, what's going on? You raised the price this year in July and you didn't bring us new fuel, because the Minister had always said we are adjusting it because new fuel is coming in. They are saying, well, it is July. We didn't get new fuel and yet you are raising the prices. The Minister indicated to the community that there was a delay factor in there but, again, in September, the ministry had to once again adjust the prices upwards. The fuel prices are still the same, so the communities are really concerned that they are paying, like in June, I think it was $1.40 per litre, which is one of the highest communities in the North right now.
The problem there is that the fuel prices everywhere in the North has stabilized and, in fact, has dropped in many other communities except those communities being provided service by our petroleum products division. I can appreciate that the ministry is getting stuck with stock, but there must be some way to be more flexible to provide our communities market pricing. I don't think it is fair at all that the communities would be stuck with paying $1.40 per litre only because one of the communities like Jean Marie, when the fuel price is at $1.40, they would be getting their fuel from other places like down the road, either Fort Simpson, Hay River or Inuvik, stock up with those fuel prices, so they will have a catch-22 there, Mr. Chair, where the product in that tank is not going to move at all. It is stuck at $1.40 and then some of the other criticism, too, about the fuel stock is that not all the stock in that tank was bought by the government at $1.40. If there was half a tank, does it mean that the full 2,000 litre tank gets charged out at $1.40? They are not exactly fuel specialists or financial wizards, these people in our communities, but they know that, if the tank is half full, you can't be charging full rates just because you put in 10 gallons. They see that and come to me saying there must be a better way of doing it. Either that or else you provide some kind of subsidy to community people, because a lot of the fuel is used for living off the land, like the community of Trout Lake which is...I don't know the word for it. I guess it is like landlocked. They are remote enough that, for half the year, things have to get flown in and out of there. So they are saying there must be a way in order to benefit us in world market pricing. I know that the ministry is going to be looking at it, but if the Minister can comment on what is a better way of doing that to make the prices reflective of the world.
I know that we have a petroleum products revolving fund. I don't know if we can use this and take advantage of that to provide lower prices to the communities. I really think, Mr. Chair, that we have to, as a government, take a hit and adjust those prices downward. That is what governments do. We take a hit sometimes just to level out the playing field. In fact, in this House, we talk about it quite often. It is through subsidies. This is one instance that we are going to have to do it. I am not too sure how many communities are serviced through the petroleum product department or how much of an impact it would be to drop all the prices down to, just to pick a figure, Mr. Chair, $1.00 per litre. I don't know how much of a hit we are going to take if we do that, but I don't see a way out of this, Mr. Chair, especially if the price is going to remain stable for the rest of the next six months anyways. That is all I can see. But yet our communities are stuck with these high prices. There is only one way to do it. We are going to have to take a hit there, Mr. Chair. I will leave that up with the Minister to consider and look and provide something back to our community.
Another concern that stems from my riding was a problem of procurement of office spaces. We have wonderful guidelines and procedures of how to give out contracts. Yet we had an instance in one of my communities where a contract really didn't...There was some question as to how it was handed out. I had a couple of enquiries saying, hey, I wasn't even put on the bidding list. I provide that service. Why am I left out? But the response of the department was rather neat. They are saying that business or those businesses didn't provide adequate type of services that we wanted. But, just the same, that is why we have a bidding process, Mr. Chair, that everybody should be entitled and offered an opportunity to bid and provide that service. At that point, then, once you have the bid in front of you, that is when you determine when a provider didn't have enough in their bid package or meet some type of minimum standard to provide their services. It is at that point that you make a determination. You don't make a determination beforehand. You have to give people the benefit of the doubt. I don't think it happened in this particular case. I have been in contact with the Minister's office with regard to this. He assured me that things were followed properly, yet there is still the perception that a step was missed, that there were some discrepancies with how that contract was awarded or given out. It was kind of like...While we are having this discussion, too, in the House, it is that whole area of negotiated contracts and what qualifies for it. In this case, I really didn't think that negotiated contract applied. Again, it is about offering our services to the general public and to the businesses out there, providing everybody equally in having a bid on the services that the government wants.
One further point that had caused great distress to the community, as well, is that jobs being provided in my region are one of the ways that we are stimulating economic development. One can argue that Nahendeh, my riding alone, is economically depressed. By providing jobs and decentralization, it is an injection of new money into our communities. One government job at a manager level is probably worth about $120,000 or more there, Mr. Chair. What happened in the last year, too, is that one of our jobs got transferred. I am not too sure about the reasoning too, and people back home are not very clear about the reason for transferring the position away from the regional office. Petroleum products are supposed to be a central office, but yet we moved that job over to Yellowknife and they are still quite concerned about that in the community because it is a lost job. It is a big thing. ITI did an ad and had been running it for some time about the story of the bouncing buck. So that is $100,000 or $120,000 that doesn't get to bounce around one iota in my community and in my region, Mr. Chair.
With that, I will be looking for some comments from the Minister. I will just end my opening statements.