Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to thank the mover of the motion. Obviously today, he’s very passionate, and our seconder, Mr. Menicoche. The motion really speaks more about cost of living than anything else, and it’s affecting, I think, more so the cost of living, as Ms. Bisaro said, in Yellowknife. I think that’s important that we make a note here today.
I think the question that many of us have is, why? Why do we pay more? Why do gas prices appear not to fluctuate as we possibly see in southern markets? I think that comes down to the unique type of competition that we have in the North. Our supply and demand are definitely in a bit of a premium. We have transportation costs that are incurred more so than we would see down south. Now we have bridge tolls to add on to that. We do have lower volumes per se, so that’s going to affect our prices. We definitely have generally higher overhead than most of our retailers down south. Our labour and electricity costs, for one, are going up, and our infrastructure is definitely higher.
I want to talk about our taxes for a second and I want to spend just a second on that. The NWT tax rate is set by the Petroleum Tax Act, and our tax for people who are on the highway is 10.7 cents per litre. If you’re off the highway, it is 6.4 cents per litre, which I think is an interesting disparity that we have there. To put that into perspective, Alberta is at 9 cents per litre in their tax act and if we compare that to our two territories, Yukon is 6.2 cents and Nunavut is 6.4 cents. More importantly, the fact that our tax rates have not been looked at since 1997, I think that is a dart and bull’s-eye that should be looked at as we think about this motion and the challenge.
The motion speaks to investigating and evaluating the regulating of gasoline prices. It asks some clarity that the public has been asking for. I think that’s an important point I needed to flesh out here. I don’t have a problem with the investigating part, but I do have a concern about telling retailers or the market what prices they should set. We are a free market society and I don’t want to leave that out in the cold, and I don’t want to impose any restrictions on that free market.
For the record, I have talked to many of my local retailers that sell petroleum products and I can tell you that they have been adjusting their prices according to rack rates. There is no, in my mind, collusion or price fixing that I see in my riding and I
have a number of retailers, probably more so than any of the ridings here. I just want to make sure that there is not a conspiracy out there, as probably mentioned by the Member, but maybe an observation for us to look at.
Based on what I indicated about the tax rate, I would challenge the petroleum products division to take a look at that in looking at this motion and putting forth changes here. Of course, I know that this will affect some of our revenues in the Consolidated Revenue Fund, but I think that would be justified in the eyes of the consumer. I would challenge him to look at that 10.7 cents per litre for those that are on our highway system and maybe put them on line with the non-highway rates.
Therefore, the motion speaks to investigating and evaluating and does not make direct reference to telling businesses what to do, and I think that’s important. Therefore, with that, I really appreciate Mr. Hawkins and Mr. Menicoche bringing it forward and I will be supporting this motion under those terms.