Thank you, Mr. Chair. We’ll commit to getting a list of some of our vacant positions as far as SAOs go. We do have a number of training positions where we have local people training to be SAOs through, I think, the School of Community Government and LGANT, so we’ll supply that information to committee. That way they have good knowledge of who’s being trained and from which communities.
Debates of March 2nd, 2015
This is page numbers 5871 – 5908 of the Hansard for the 17th Assembly, 5th 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 going.
Topics
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
The Chair Daryl Dolynny
Thank you, Minister McLeod. Committee, we’re on page 359, Municipal
and Community Affairs, community governance, operations expenditure summary, $2.303 million. Does committee agree?
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Some Hon. Members
Agreed.
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
The Chair Daryl Dolynny
Committee, page 360, Municipal and Community Affairs, community governance, active positions. Any questions?
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Some Hon. Members
Agreed.
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
The Chair Daryl Dolynny
Page 363, Municipal and Community Affairs, directorate, operations expenditure summary, $3.915 million. Ms. Bisaro.
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Wendy Bisaro Frame Lake
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a couple questions here. I’d like to know, first of all, there’s some legislation, I believe, that the department is working on and preparing amendments and/or new acts. One of them I hear is the Cities, Towns and Villages Act and I think the other one is the Property Assessment and Taxation Act. I guess I would just like to know, in general, what legislation is being reviewed. Is there any legislation going to come forward before the end of the 17th , and/or if not, what are the plans of the
department for bringing forward legislation in the 18th ?
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Schauerte
Thank you, Mr. Chair. The two major pieces of legislation that are on our priority list right now include the Civil Emergency Measures Act and the Fire Prevention Act. The department has recently completed work on the legislative proposal and has advanced that through Cabinet to the Legislative Initiatives Committee. We are continuing our work on the Fire Prevention Act and we’re still in a research gathering phase at this time.
We certainly understand that there are a number of other pressure points for municipal legislation including some of the ones being raised by the Member. At this point the department is challenged with resources, including human, and time and financial to allocate to things like research. We don’t anticipate looking at Cities, Towns and Villages or other municipal pieces of legislation or PATA until the 18th Assembly at this time.
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Wendy Bisaro Frame Lake
Thanks to Mr. Schauerte. If there’s a capacity issue at this point, and we’re talking the ’15-16 budget, so obviously there’s nothing in this budget that’s going to allow for the legislation beyond the Emergency Measures and maybe the Fire Prevention Act. In the 18th , with the budget for
the ’16-17 year, are you looking at increasing your capacity and getting more staff so that you can do some of this legislation which has been talked about for quite some years now? PATA, I think we’ve been talking about it for three or four years.
Is there a plan to increase the budget so that you can get this work done?
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Schauerte
Certainly, the issue of resources is not a new one. I do recall that committee did raise this during the review of our business plan, and while we would have liked to have added additional resources in the legislative area, physical limitations and forced growth prevented us from doing that. We have, however, re-profiled a senior policy position in our department and our unit to be more of a legislative researcher position. Historically, this position would deal with more policy related and perhaps support to the Minister’s office. Those sorts of things. We’ve recognized the need for more dedicated research in the area of legislation and, accordingly, have re-profiled this position to provide more support in that area.
To be honest, it’s more of a “let’s see how we’re doing” phase right now with the resources that we’ve added. We seem to have made progress on both CEMA and the Fire Prevention Act, so we’re confident that we are moving the priorities forward, the ones that are with us right now. We need to have some success in those areas before we can undertake new challenges, so at this point it is our anticipated plan to work within existing resources and see if we can make some headway with what we have right now.
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Wendy Bisaro Frame Lake
I don’t want to sound too sceptical, but we have been talking about a number of acts, the Property Assessment and Taxation Act, for some time. I certainly hope this brief profiling of a position is going to allow you to move forward on some of the three or four acts affecting municipalities that you haven’t been able to get to. I’ve only mentioned two; I know there are two or three others that don’t come to mind at the moment. It seems to me that our municipalities deserve to have up-to-date legislation that governs them. In my mind, there ought to be a higher priority for the department on bringing this legislation up to date.
I suspect I’ll get the same answer, but my other question has to do with the hotel levy, which has been talked about again for quite a number of years. It was moving along reasonably nicely, I thought, but then it hit a roadblock because somebody objected somewhere. It went back for further research.
Can I get an update on where this is at? Are we going to see any kind of resolution to this possible hotel levy in this 2015-16 year this summer? Thank you.
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Williams
Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Member is correct; we have been involved with this file for a number of years and it’s not moving as fast
as everyone would like. We determined that there are four basic approaches to create a regime where revenues from a tariff on hotel rooms could be collected. Taxes could be created in taxation legislation specific to hotel accommodations levied by the territory with some or all of the revenues remitted back to a municipality either by legislation or policy. Secondly, taxation legislation can be created by a territory for the benefit of municipalities. The third option is a designation marketing fee where hotel operators in the community can voluntarily collect fees and pull them together for a specific purpose.
As recently as last summer or last fall, we did approach the Yellowknife Hotel Association and offered the destination marketing fee as an option to pursue so we didn’t have to go through the legislative route. That was rejected as an option. The Yellowknife Hotel Association has been adamant they want to have this area regulated. So, we are still doing some further research in this area.
Initially we intended to consult with hotel operators and community governments but have deferred this consultation to the beginning of the 18th Legislative
Assembly due to our other legislative priorities that were mentioned earlier.
One thing we are willing to do, and for consideration, is to go back to the Yellowknife Hotel Association and make that offer again to seriously look at the designation marketing fee as a valuable option. We are willing to do that to try to move this file forward. If not, it would certainly be a priority when we do municipal legislation under the 18th Assembly. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Wendy Bisaro Frame Lake
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I thank Mr. Williams for the answer, but I’m not very pleased to hear what you have to say. Again, this has been a really long time coming and I guess I would have thought that in four years we would have been able to reach some kind of middle ground to get something accomplished.
I am pleased to hear the department is willing to go back and talk to the hotel operators again. That is something that would get this in place sooner rather than later, but I can understand why the hotel operators want to have something that’s regulated as well. I know that this is not something which everybody in the territory wants. I could see where for the territory to administer the legislation is not the way to go, but certainly to provide for municipalities to put this levy in place if they wanted, I think, is something that’s really doable. I am somewhat dismayed that we haven’t been able to make relatively minor amendments to legislation in order to make it feasible for communities such as Yellowknife to put this thing in place. Just a
comment, Mr. Chair. I don’t have anything else to add. Thank you.
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
The Chair Daryl Dolynny
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. We’ll just treat that last statement as a comment. The Minister has already replied. Continuing on with directorate for questions, I have Mr. Bromley.
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Bob Bromley Weledeh
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to add my voice to my colleague’s, Ms. Bisaro, on the considerable disappointment in not seeing any response to the concerns raised in the past. There is an efficient legislative capacity in this department. Initially we were led to believe the limit was in the Department of Justice and when we discovered that it wasn’t, it was actually in the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs, we raised this very solidly with the Minister. The legislation needs only get stronger and perhaps more desperate every day. I am sure the Minister would like to address this. Maybe I will just ask, what does the Minister need from us to get this done?
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Robert C. McLeod Inuvik Twin Lakes
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Right before committee I think there was support there for our desire to add next an extra person on. As you heard from Mr. Schauerte, we’ve re-profiled one of our positions to help deal with this so we can take care of some of the backlog as far as legislation goes and be as current as possible. We had the support of committee. Again, because of fiscal constraint, we were unable to get the position at this time, so we re-profiled internally. Thank you.
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Bob Bromley Weledeh
Thanks for that response, but the question was just asked and responded that we are not looking at these acts at this time. We have a capacity issue. That’s at odds with what the Minister just said.
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Robert C. McLeod Inuvik Twin Lakes
We do have a capacity issue. I think we said that. That’s why we re-profiled a position internally, to help deal with some of the workload. Right now I think we have maybe two people who are dealing with legislation that we have to bring forward. We’ve added another one internally, so that should help us take care of some of the backlog and some of the outstanding legislation. We do have a capacity issue right now, but we’re taking steps to deal with it and hope to be able to move forward once everybody gets up to speed. Thank you.
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Bob Bromley Weledeh
Thanks for that response. One of the issues that have been also bumbling away for years now is the local improvement charges, the provision of the authority, the capability for municipalities to deal with that and offer that. In its absence, we are, to some degree, adding to the cost of living are not taking advantage of the opportunities. We have to help residents with the cost of living. We are also avoiding, really, the
opportunity to help with the cost of renewable energy infrastructure.
As we heard earlier today from my colleague Mr. Moses as he talked about the exceptional front-end costs of installing solar in Inuvik – and this is true of different renewable energy systems – even though the payback time and the internal rate of return is very, very attractive compared to any other investment these days, they are finding it very hard to deal with those front-end costs. This is the sort of thing that municipalities, in concert with this government, could deal with it through the provision of local improvement charges and funds.
So, for example, I am working with some people interested in solar right now and one of them had to drop out of the interest because they’re leaving town in a year and the system won’t be paid back. This would help deal with that. So, the charge would be picked up by the next owner of the home and it’s just a very common sense way to go about dealing with these costs.
What are we doing and when will we provide the legislative, as I understand it, and policy support needed to enable our communities to take advantage of these opportunities to help our residents deal with their cost of living and our larger government goals of energy and greenhouse gas emissions, et cetera? Thank you.
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Williams
Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Member is correct; we do want to help reduce the cost of living in the North. It’s expensive, and any way we can, we have to look at avenues to do so. Under the local improvement tax it is tied to the Cities, Towns and Villages Act, and that’s something that we did say we committed to have a review of that and bring forward in the 18th Assembly. So, there’s a direct linkage to that particular piece of legislation.
Right now residents that do want to make an investment can go to the bank. There are options of going to the regular lenders, to banks to help fund these enhancements to their homes. Certainly having it legislated is probably a good way to go and we are committed to look at that once we start looking at the municipal legislation.
We have 20 pieces of legislation as a department that we’re responsible for and we are making efforts to get them through. Some have been very outdated, like the Fire Prevention Act and the Civil Emergency Measures Act. So we have to set our legislative priorities, and those are, in our minds, more critical for the residents of the Northwest Territories than a local improvement legislation. It’s something that in our priorities we are aware of it, we know the issues. The City of Yellowknife has
voiced their opinions on it numerous times and until we get through the Cities, Towns and Villages Act and update our municipal legislation, I think that’s where it’s tied to and that’s where we could make those enhancements. Thank you, Mr. Chair.