Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With respect to municipal ATIPP legislation, we have been working with the Department of Justice to continue to respond to the Privacy Commissioner on this. In our most recent commitment to the Privacy Commissioner, the department has engaged with the NWT Association of Communities and the Local Government Administrators of the NWT to proceed with formal consultation with community governments relative to the implementation of ATIPP legislation. The intent, really, is to hear from community governments about their ability to respond to legislation of this nature.
Anecdotally, we have indicated that community governments are capacity challenged under this, but we really need to hear from them as to what impact legislation of this nature would have on them.
We’re well aware of this type of legislation across the country so what we need to do is proceed from a very informed perspective, relative to community governments.
With respect to the municipal taxation authority, this shows up in our department as the Property Tax Revenue Grant Program. The department is under direction right now from the Financial Management Board to go out and conduct an analysis of which community governments may be able to take on this authority. At this point we do know that seven
of the community governments that don’t have this authority may have sufficient municipal or the asset base within their community to make the program something that might be viable at the local level.
With respect to the other community governments, it’s unlikely that they’ll be able to attain this kind of taxation authority, or at least be able to successfully implement it. In most cases it wouldn’t be cost effective or viable for them to do that. We’re under direction to return to the Financial Management Board within a couple of months on this with our assessment, which will help inform the future direction in this area.
With respect to a hotel levy, again, we are aware that the NWT Association of Communities has passed a motion relative to the creation of a hotel levy and we have met with the Yellowknife Hotel Association in the past on this. It is the department’s intention to proceed with formal consultation through communication with community governments and hotel operators to hear from them about their perspective on this. It is our department’s sense, at this time, that the hotel operators in the city of Yellowknife are certainly interested in this option, and at this point, we just want to determine from other community governments and other hotel operators in other communities whether or not there’s more widespread support for something like this.