Thank you, Mr. Bromley. To the motion, the honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will not be supporting the motion. I believe this motion is going a little too far, especially with the impact it’s going to have on our small communities where we depend on the good old pickup trucks to get around. Those are our work trucks; they’re not just a luxury item. In most cases we do have potholes. We don’t have just a few speed bumps on the way. Most of our highways are gravel and rough. I think someone with a hybrid trying to operate under that condition, or even a Lexus for that matter, will have a real problem in navigating themselves on the roads we have to travel on.

It’s important to realize that this is just one tax of many taxes that we see on the horizon. Until we know what the picture is in regard to the global issues by way of enforcing this type of legislation, but not imposing it strictly on the type of livelihood that you have or where you live, and not having the luxury of driving on paved roads….

I think you also have to realize that there are 12,000 truckloads that drive up our highway systems to the diamond mines, yet nothing in this legislation is going to affect that industry. They’re shipping 12,000 truckloads of diesel fuel to these diamond mines, and nothing’s been done in that case. I think it’s important to realize we have some bigger polluters out there than little Joe and Mary trying to run up the hills to get a load of wood.

I think it’s important that this government takes a comprehensive approach in regard to these different initiatives of tax increases, raising fuel taxes, or considering alternative tax implications. At the end of the day the bottom line for people living in small communities is what effect this has on the high cost of living that’s already in place. We pay the highest price in regard to fuel; we pay a fuel tax on top of that. We also pay in regard to heating fuel. We’re nailed with another tax on our heating fuel. I think it’s important to realize that in what little way this was intended…. You have to calculate the cumulative effect of all taxes, not just this one that’s being presented.

At this time I will be voting against the motion.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. To the motion, the honourable Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. My colleague brought forward a worthy motion with many positive points. Regretfully, the point that affects me and my constituents is that it increases the cost by further registration. I cannot support this motion.

The Members have spoken about the benefit to all NWT residents. Once again, I have to disagree with my colleagues; it is not benefiting all the NWT residents. I’ve got a constituency with many small

communities and road systems, and they have to depend on the bigger vehicles to move around, to move their goods. In fact, many of my communities don’t even have a consistent store, so they do have to travel quite a bit.

Having the benefits of a smaller vehicle is just not advantageous to them. It’s not a choice for them. They do have to have these larger vehicles in order to get around. In the urban centres — where you have nice roads and you’re using it daily and you have a choice — it’s probably a necessity that you move to smaller vehicles to do your running around from one end of Yellowknife to the other, to do your grocery shopping and move your kids around. But in the smaller communities there’s just not that kind of environment that’s conducive to this type of change in our legislation.

Some of the points — that the Department of Transportation should be researching this type of thing — I agree with, but by bringing it forward in the motion, I just cannot support it in this form.

Another thing is that Members made an issue of climate change and the ability of our constituents to think green. All those are good points. Again, for my constituency it’s not a choice. It becomes an issue of cost and how it impacts their pocketbooks. With those points I just cannot support this motion. I will be voting against it.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. To the motion, the honourable Member for Kam Lake, Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to thank the Member for Great Slave for bringing forward the motion that’s before us today. I agree with the principle of the motion. Being the chair of EDI, any proposed changes to registration from the Department of Transportation would be vetted through the committee. I think a lot of the concerns — and concerns I share with Members…. I am not going to support any increase, especially in the smaller communities, for operating a vehicle. That’s just something I wouldn’t condone.

If we do move to something like this, I could see folks who want to buy a hybrid or want to buy a more fuel efficient smaller vehicle being given a break on the registration fees. I can’t see myself supporting any increase to registration fees for vehicles in the Northwest Territories. I could see us lowering them for the more fuel efficient vehicles.

In the smaller communities, like some of my colleagues were saying, there isn’t much of a choice. The roads are such that you need a truck. A truck is a way of life in small communities for people who are out harvesting caribou or on the land. They need a big vehicle. And for transporting their families in the small communities, a small vehicle is just not going to do it. There are potholes.

I’ve been to a number of small communities myself, and the roads are oftentimes a sad state.

Again, I want to say that I do support the motion in principle. To the Members who are opposing the motion before us today, I want them to take some satisfaction in that all of this, if it happens, is going to be vetted through committee. There will be ample opportunity to discuss this again.

Again, to the principle of the motion I do agree, Mr. Speaker, and I’ll be supporting the motion.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. To the motion, the honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to indicate at the outset that I am in support of this motion, and then to the principle of the motion that has been mentioned by my colleague before me.... I think I’d like to make some comments, though, in relation to some of the arguments that have been presented already and try to counter them.

I also feel that there should not be an increase to registration fees in small communities, and I don’t believe that’s what this particular motion presents. It presents, simply, the possibility of implementing a tiered registration system. It does not say that registrations will increase. We’re not discussing the implementation here; we’re merely discussing the principle of this particular motion.

I think that a tiered system will allow us to accommodate regional differences. I fully understand that we have regional differences and that in Tulita it’s far easier to drive with a truck than to drive with a small car on the roads that exist there. I agree with that. But I think a tiered system will allow us to maintain current registration fees at the level they are at now and give some sort of a break for people who wish to…. It will give them an incentive to take care of the environment and look at purchasing a more fuel efficient vehicle.

I have to say that, in my mind, there are large vehicles, which would be a truck that’s, say, an F-150, and there are gigantic vehicles. I think the intent of this motion is to increase fees for gigantic vehicles. I think there’s a full understanding on the part of Members that an F-150 is a fairly common vehicle in the communities, and it probably will survive the roads that exist in the communities and will take them from one to the other. There’s no need in most communities for the gigantic vehicle — even for those with large families.

I think that this particular motion will supplement the ecoAUTO rebate program that we have in place and that it will encourage people to limit their greenhouse gas emissions. I think that’s a good thing. I think that’s something we should keep front

and centre of our minds all the time, and I don’t know that we do that.

I do think it’s time we take responsibility for our own energy use. It’s a mentality we have to keep hammering away at. I think most people, to a certain extent, have a little bit of it, but it’s in the back of our brain as opposed to the front of our brain. This is just one more tool we can use to get people to be conscious of what they’re doing.

I think I’ll quit before I lose my voice.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. To the motion, the honourable Member for Deh Cho, Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I certainly appreciate the comments of the Members on this issue. It is a very important issue, and it’s been an issue that the Department of Transportation has been looking at for some time in looking at the options that are possible within the area.

Given the location of where we live in the world — in the Northwest Territories — it’s important that we recognize we’re going to be the most impacted by climate change. It’s important that we do our share and lead by example.

Our government in the last while has been working hard to provide programs to provide incentives to reduce the cost of energy and promote energy efficiency for our homes and for our businesses. We’ve heard a lot about different ways to do that, and vehicles should be no different. We’ve really been working towards seeing what other jurisdictions are doing. We’ve done a scan on all the other jurisdictions across the country and how they work with the vehicle registration fee structures. A tiered approach, of course, is usually based on vehicle fuel consumption. But that’s just one of many options. Other jurisdictions are looking at a number of other things.

Of the 13 jurisdictions that we looked at, seven do not offer any type of incentives for fuel efficiency. Others do, however, based on different ways to calculate that. Some are based on vehicle weight, others are based on cylinder displacement, and some other jurisdictions offer a rebate on registration and insurance for vehicles that qualify for federal government programs.

Right now I wanted to inform the House that we are looking at a number of options that include a tiered registration system. We’d be glad to share our findings with all the Members of this House. As this motion is to provide direction to our government, Cabinet will not be voting on it.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. To the motion, the honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.

Mr. Speaker, the challenges before us in terms of climate change and the greenhouse emissions have certainly been brought to the forefront of people in the last couple of years, especially with the winter roads and the ice crossings. Even being in Fort Providence last weekend…. I talked about being on the river with my father-in-law. He set a net, and he was saying, “You know, at this time of the year we should have ice coming down the river here. How come there’s no ice on the river? The weather has really been changed quite a lot for us.”

We know our challenges as leaders in the community. The elders having a difficult time in the evening: what kind of weather is it going to be the next day in terms of reading the weather? Climate change is right in our face.

I want to say thank you to the Member for continuing to raise the issue here in terms of the challenges, which for us are very true in many different aspects.

Mr. Speaker, our biggest polluters — as Mr. Krutko, the Member for Mackenzie Delta, talked about — are the diamond mines and the amount of traffic that comes through Yellowknife to bring the fuel up to the diamond mines so they can produce diamonds in the Northwest Territories. Two big factors, in terms of the greenhouse emissions here, are the diamond mines and the trucks that come up to deliver supplies to them. I think this motion should be looked at again in terms of how we tackle these two big issues.

The NWT Hydro Strategy talks about the diamond mines. They talk about putting a road into the diamond mines to reduce the amount of traffic in the North. Things like that should be really looked at.

DOT is one of our biggest contributors in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. I know they have done some work in terms of how they have reduced emissions by their use of the facilities in the North and by the number of vehicles they have on the road here. That’s something that should strongly come back to this government, talking about how we reduce the transportation initiative in terms of eliminating some of the greenhouse gas here.

I have an issue with this, because in some of our smaller communities there is no proper garage in terms of looking at how we use our vehicles. If we want a vehicle, sometimes our roads are not equipped for those vehicles. In my communities they talk about the use of vehicles, and what’s needed in there, as you said, is the F-150. Sometimes we have large families, and the high

cost of living makes it so that we all need to travel to some of the communities to do some shopping.

Mr. Speaker, in my community we don’t have very many roads. On some of the small roads in our communities we travel around and around and around. In other regions they can go to different areas, but they are only lucky when the window opens up in January until the end of March, just to get out here.

A two tier system should look at all transportation. Look at the barges that come down the Mackenzie River and how much diesel they use in NTCL super barges arriving in the North. They use a lot of that. Look at the airplanes. We need to look at a lot.

I understand where the Member is going, but first I think we should look at it closely in terms of how we go about it. What we need to look at is how this is impacting some of our small communities and have some time to think about this.

Mr. Speaker, with the price of gas $1.69 a litre in Tulita, when that price went up again, a lot of people were talking about how we get fuel efficiency vehicles in lieu of the gas guzzlers to be had. We talked to the companies who sell these vehicles down at Hay River and Inuvik. There is a very fine balance in terms of personal choice and consciousness of climate change.

Again, we have large families. They all want to travel together. I don’t think we can afford another vehicle to travel with them. We thought the things that need to be considered…. I think breaks should be given to the people who are on the winter road system. They should get a break and a discount on registration for travelling on that road system. Something like that should be looked at.

Mr. Speaker, at this time I’m not going to support the motion. I think it’s a worthy cause, but we should have some more discussions. I think our people are going to be impacted in our communities if we start implementing this. I know if we start implementing this discussion here, a lot of investment can go into discussion and research. I think it needs to be brought to the community or to the House for some more discussion before we look into something like that. It could be beneficial to the people in the North. Right now I think the diamond mines and the trucking companies that are using more should be the ones who should be paying the types of prices, if we’re looking at something like this.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. To the motion? I’ll allow the mover of the motion some closing comments. Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you. Mr. Speaker, maybe my initial opening comments were a little on the long side and people stopped listening to me

halfway through. In no way, shape or form does this motion suggest that vehicles in small communities should have a higher registration rate. It doesn’t say that. It doesn’t suggest that. If that’s what you think, I’m sorry, but that’s definitely not what it’s saying.

It does actually provide some incentive and encourage people to buy more fuel efficient vehicles. There may be a lower rate to those individuals, but certainly not a higher rate for those individuals in the small community driving, as Ms. Bisaro pointed out, the F-150.

I think it’s very important for us to be leaders and not followers, and this is an opportunity for us to demonstrate our commitment to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in the Northwest Territories. I know that there’s a lot that needs to be done, and this is just one small step. I’m glad to hear the Minister responsible indicate that there is research underway. I think that’s a good step, but I also think passing this motion is important. It’s so important, in fact, that I think I’m going to request a recorded vote on this one. I’m also going to request and strongly encourage the Premier to allow Cabinet members a free vote on this motion so that we can all demonstrate our individual commitment to the environment and move forward in the best interests of the people of the Northwest Territories.

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The Member is requesting a recorded vote. All those in favour of the motion, please stand.

All those opposed to the motion, please stand.

All those abstaining from the motion, please stand.

Results are of the votes: six for, four against, seven abstentions.

Motion carried.

Colleagues, I have two further motions on the order paper for today. The chair is going to call a short break before we proceed to the next motion.

The House took a short recess.

The House resumed.

Back to Orders of the Day. Item 16, motions. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.