Merci, Madam la Presidente. The committee wishes to deal with Bill 62 and Committee Report 39-19(2). Mahsi.

Thank you. Does committee agree?

Thank you, committee. We'll take a short recess and resume with the first item.

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I will now call committee back to order. Committee, we have agreed to consider Bill 62, An Act to Amend the Income Tax Act. I will ask the Minister of Finance to introduce the bill.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I am here to present Bill 62, An Act to Amend the Income Tax Act, No. 2.

The main purpose of Bill 62 is to make various legislative retroactive housekeeping measures to the territorial income tax legislation to comply with the Canada-Northwest Territories Tax Collection Agreement. These amendments keep territorial legislation current and harmonized with the federal income tax legislation. Specifically, the proposed changes include:

• Remove a reference to a repealed federal provision about an option for trusts to pay tax;
• Exclude a reference to the federal COVID-19 relief measures for an additional GST/HST payment;
• Exclude a reference to the federal temporary wage subsidy under COVID-19 relief measures;
• Include special federal rules for determining the Northwest Territories Child Benefit as part of COVID-19 relief measures;
• Include a reference to the federal special rule for the disability supports deduction as part of COVID-19 relief measures;
• Align the Northwest Territories Act with the federal administrative rules in compliance with the Canada-Northwest Territories Tax Collection Agreement;
• Include a reference to federal rules on evidence for notices sent to persons in compliance with the Canada-Northwest Territories Tax Collection Agreement;
• Include a reference to federal provisions relating to certain allowed or disallowed deductions in the calculation of the federal foreign tax credit; and,
• Remove ambiguity in certain terms relating to tax on split income for multi-jurisdictional tax filers.

Bill 62 also includes an amendment to allow the Canada Revenue Agency to share Northwest Territories-specific taxpayer data with Finance Canada. Sharing this data with Finance Canada assists in designing tax policy, and it benefits the GNWT as it allows Finance Canada to provide a more detailed analysis of the implications of federal tax measures on the territorial tax system. The Canada Revenue Agency has a number of stringent security agreements in place to safeguard Northwest Territories taxpayer data from being used inappropriately. That concludes my opening remarks, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Minister. Would you like to bring witnesses into the Chamber?

Yes, Madam Chair.

Sergeant-at-arms, please escort the witnesses into the Chamber. Thank you. Minister, please introduce your witnesses.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, on my right I have Kelly Bluck, who is director of fiscal policy within the Department of Finance, and on my left I have Christina Duffy, who is legislative director.

Thank you, and welcome. I will now turn to the chair of the Standing Committee on Government Operations, the committee that reviewed the bill, for any opening comments on Bill 62. MLA Johnson.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Bill 62, An Act to Amend the Income Tax Act, received second reading in the Legislative Assembly on November 2nd, 2022, and was referred to the Standing Committee on Government Operations for review.

On January 18th, 2023, the standing committee held a public hearing and completed its clause by clause review with the Minister of Finance I believe. The committee received no submissions on this bill. I thank the committee for reviewing this legislation. Individual Members may have additional comments. Thank you.

Thank you. I will now open the floor to general comments on Bill 62. Member for Frame Lake.

Thanks, Madam Chair. Who could have thought tax bills would be so exciting? But the committee report raises a few questions for me, and I did have the privilege of sitting in and listening to the review of the bill. There was some amendments made to the bill, and some of this, the provisions now, are being made retroactive to like more than five years ago. And I just had wondered why these changes were going back five years in time. Was there some delay on our part in getting some of this implemented? And I think the Minister said that that was not the case. But the report also says that the Minister was going to try to find details of which she would try to find and provide separately to committee. I'm not aware that that actually happened. So was the Minister and her staff actually able to see why these delays in implementation took place? Thanks, Madam Chair.

Sorry, and if I could add. I just wanted to get the Minister to reconfirm that none of these delays were our fault as a government. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Member. Minister of Finance.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I do remember that exchange, Madam Chair, and I apologize if we didn't include that on any correspondence to committee. I did just confirm again now with the Department of Finance, as I had at the time, that, indeed, these were changes that were slow in coming from the federal government and so we are simply aligning with the calendar that they had -- or the timelines that they had put forward on their side. So, again, I ought to have conveyed that to committee earlier; I apologize for not doing so. Thank you.

Thank you. Member for Frame Lake.

Thanks, Madam Chair. So the other matter that I raised was clearly going back in time now several years for some of these provisions. I just want to get the Minister on record that we didn't actually lose any revenues as a result of these delays or changes or whatever. Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Member. Minister of Finance.

Thank you, Madam Chair. No, there's no lost revenues on that. Thank you.

Thank you. Member for Frame Lake.

Thank you, Member. Minister.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So, Madam Chair, I can say that refundable tax credits do show up in the public accounts but something that is a non-refundable credit may not be the same. Obviously, we'll certainly do our best to try to make better use of the information sharing provisions. But, I mean, if there are specific elements of tax credits or specific tax provisions that the Member's interested in getting information on, you know, if we can get that, again, I'm happy to try to distill that data as much as possible. This, theoretically, is supposed to help with that data collection from the federal side and they do administer, on our behalf, a lot through the Canada Revenue Agency. So, again, hopefully this will indeed answer that, but if there's specific elements of credits that the Member's looking for, that would be helpful to know. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister. Member for Frame Lake.

Thanks, Madam Chair. Yeah, it's not so much "me" -- I might have some interest -- but I'd understood committee was interested in getting some calculations or, you know, the value of the lost revenues to this government from things like political contributions as a tax credit. So I'm going to leave this to committee, but I think there's a commitment from the Minister there to ask Canada Revenue Agency for that information if committee wants it. And probably in the interest of full disclosure, that kind of information should start to appear in the full accounts in a more transparent and fuller fashion. Thanks, Madam Chair. That's all I have.

Minister of Finance.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, Madam Chair, I'm happy to try to get that data. And, again, just having briefly a conversation here with the director of fiscal policies, that that may be difficult to determine just what the amount of lost revenues are, are sort of anecdotal. The expectation is that it's not likely a significant value nonetheless -- and again, I mean, if it's across every type of tax credit, yes, we would need to just go back and look at exactly what kinds of credits we're talking about and what kind of lost revenue we're talking about. But, again, we'll go and have a look and we'll see if we can get some information. Thank you.

Thank you. General comments? Does the committee agree that there are no further general comments?

Can we proceed to a clause by clause review of the bill?

Committee, we will defer the bill number and title until after consideration of the clauses. I will call the clauses in groups.

Please turn to page 1 of the bill. Clause 1 to 5, does committee agree?

Clause 6 to 10, does committee agree?

Clause 11 to 13, does committee agree?

Committee, to the bill as a whole, does committee agree that Bill 62, An Act to Amend the Income Tax Act, is now ready for third reading?

Thank you, committee. Does the committee agree that this concludes our consideration of Bill 62, An Act to Amend the Income Tax Act?

Thank you, Minister, and thank you to your witnesses. Sergeant-at-arms, please escort the witnesses from the Chamber.

I'll go to the chair of the Standing Committee for Economic Development and Environment for any opening comments. Member for Nunakput.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The Standing Committee on Economic Development and Environment identified contaminated sites in the Northwest Territories as a priority for the committee to focus on. Several stakeholders were engaged to provide feedback and guide the committee through its review of contaminated sites. Committee received seven public presentations from the stakeholders in both private and in public sector throughout the review, and as a result that the review as a committee presented the report with the 16 recommendations to the Legislative Assembly, February 7th, 2023.

I want to thank my committee for reviewing this as a priority in prevention of the management of contaminated sites. And, Madam Chair, individual Members might have some additional comments. Thank you.

Thank you, Member for Nunakput. I will now open the floor to general comments on Committee Report 39-19(2). Member for Frame Lake.

Thanks, Madam Chair. Yeah, I want to commend the chair and members of the committee, that included myself, for the hard work that went into this. We had a lot of support in getting these presenters before us and in compiling the report. And, you know, why is this important? You know, our government has assumed tens of millions of dollars of unnecessary public liabilities as a result of measures that were not taken to prevent contaminated sites. And, you know, the biggest one is just, you know, five or seven kilometres down the road here, the Giant Mine, where our government is now contributing, over a period of time, about $23 million towards the remediation of that site.

Another one -- and I'm certainly going to be raising this a little bit later in this sitting -- is the Cameron Hills sour gas field that was owned by Strategic Oil and Gas. Our government is now booked $20 million of liability associated with this property.

You know, I would rather spend that money on housing, education, healthcare, anything except for remediation of contaminated sites which are clearly preventable. And the last site that I mentioned was assumed post-devolution. So that's why this is important.

It's also important because this can help us as a government implement some of the provisions of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, specifically Article 29, which says that States shall take effective measure to ensure that no storage or disposal of hazardous material shall take place in the lands or territories of Indigenous peoples without their free, prior, and informed consent. That hasn't happened here, Madam Chair.

So, in any event, I commend committee. There's, I think, a number of very sound recommendations here that provide a bit of a roadmap for how we can avoid and prevent liabilities in the future. Unfortunately, this was a mandate item in the last Assembly for the government and very little, if any, work was done. And I don't really -- I have yet to see any legislative regulatory changes in the life of this Assembly to help prevent further contaminated sites. And I think that's one of the reasons why committee took such an interest in this topic. Because the government hasn't done anything on this, we're giving them a mandate and, I think, a bit of a roadmap to lay that track. And there are some timelines associated with some of these recommendations, and I really look forward to the response from the Cabinet side to these recommendations. And some of these are very easy low hanging fruit that this government should undertake very quickly. Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Member for Great Slave.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I, too, want to thank all of our staff and the committee for the hard work on this report. One of the reasons that this was an important topic to myself is that I have also had a lot of involvement with the Giant Mine for many, many years as a consultant. And, in fact, that was actually the reason that I ended up in the Northwest Territories to begin with, was to take a job with the technical adviser at Giant Mine.

As an employee of the contractor at the mine, as a consultant at the mine, later on I have watched, over the years, numerous contacts and workers from the south -- or contracts going to the south and workers coming from the south to do the work on the project. And you can imagine how disappointing it was when I once bid on the project for the construction management contract only to find out that the government, once again -- the federal government at least this time -- chose to use money as the deciding factor and went with the company that had proposed $25 million less for the project on their bid despite the fact that our project actually would have -- or our proposal would have placed Indigenous people into the leadership roles at the mine within five years.

Then, bidding on the projects at the mine as a consultant, I was then told that the Aboriginal content that I had worked very hard to incorporate into my bid was only going to be used if my technical bid was the same as another, and they needed a tie breaker. That was from the current contractor -- or construction management supervisors at the mine now. My understanding is most of them live in the south, Calgary. I'm looking at their website right now. Their head office is in Centreville, Virginia, in the US. So it's very clear to me that this project, which is billions of dollars, is just funneling money out of the North, and nobody really is benefitting that much here from it. If anything, what the people here are getting are health issues and headache and poor quality of life as a result of that, not to mention the impacts of all these southern workers coming in and taking all of our housing away and not having any ability to build their own camps. We have no market for that. So I guess I just want to say that I think this was a missed opportunity. I actually think it is way too late. I think that we've missed the boat on Giant Mine, and I'm hoping that the work that the committee has done can actually spur future work to be in the true spirit of keeping work and money and contracts in the North. Thank you.

Thank you, Member. Any other general comments? Seeing no further comments, MLA for Nunakput.