Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I would be remiss if I didn't bring forward more details on exactly what the Chamber of Mines, as well as the Mining Association of Canada, what their concerns were with this bill. Some of this may be a bit duplicative of what's already been said but I think it bears repeating.
So it does propose to make changes to three pieces of legislation which could have far reaching negative effects on our mineral investment competitiveness. Industry members found that the bill was duplicative of other legislation. It proposes unusual sharing of confidential tax information beyond government staff who have the responsibility and assistance to protect business sensitive financial information. Disconcertingly, this confidential and sensitive information would also be available to business competitors, and it is being proposed before the GNWT has completed its study on resource royalties and the tax system. And as well, Madam Chair, this does not support the 19th Legislative Assembly's mandate to, quote, "increase resource exploration and development," and, quote, "restore levels of investment, partnership, employment, and growth in the NWT's economy."
As my colleague mentioned, it is duplicative of the ESTMA legislation, and that is the Extractive Sector Transparency Management Act, where individual mines report what they pay to governments in various taxes, including royalties, which are then posted publicly. This legislation was advanced and supported by the Canadian mining industry, working together with two NGOs, to become law.
In Canada, it is fully consistent with other international financial payment purporting schemes in the United Kingdom and in Europe. These jurisdictions mutually recognize each other's legislation as equivalent. This equivalency recognition allows for a company to report government payments only once and have that report address reporting requirements in multiple jurisdictions, minimizing reporting burden and duplication. ESTMA is fundamentally an anticorruption tool to determine whether payments made by industry to government match with government reporting of payments received. While not an issue in Canada, these anticorruption mechanisms have high relevance in other parts of the world where governance is weak and corruption is high. Quebec is the only other Canadian jurisdiction with similar legislation, and it too recognizes legislation in other jurisdictions as equivalent.
The extra details that are proposed in this Private Member's bill are therefore unnecessary, inconsistent with international norms, and they propose many sensitive competitiveness issues for industry and government that are not in the Northwest Territories' best interest. It is the belief of the Chamber of Mines the disclosures made under ESTMA are sufficient to provide the public with an appreciation for the royalties paid without exposing commercially sensitive aspects of each individual business to competitors or the general public. This is also unusual and inappropriate sharing of sensitive tax information. Mineral resource royalties are essentially a profits tax. They are calculated through a legislative formula that considers various factors that could affect profits positively or negatively and differentially for one mine compared to another. These include sensitive, confidential information such as market price, but in the case of diamonds, also the efficiency of an individual company's customer supply chains to maximize their own market price. It also considers business losses, capital investments, fuel costs, depreciation and amortization, and the various other taxes that companies must also pay.
In the NWT, ice road costs, for example, the cost of self-generating power, and property taxes, and other costs associated with our acute infrastructure deficit, are also some of the unique additional costs incurred by mine operators that are taken into consideration. Current NWT legislation recognizes and respects the need to protect such potentially sensitive business information. For example, under the current Northwest Territories mining regulations and under the upcoming Mineral Resources Act, through the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act. Under current privacy laws, this detailed financial information is limited to the government staff responsible to use it for detailed tax calculations and who are obligated to safeguard it. The current legislation is designed to protect the public interest by requiring companies to follow the law in reporting to government the detailed information required for royalty calculation purposes. If enacted, this bill would unusually allow the release of tax information and sharing of other sensitive information beyond government staff who have the authority and responsibility to audit and assess company confidential information with politicians and Indigenous governments without this responsibility. We say "unusually" as this is not the norm in other jurisdictions in Canada.
This broadening of the distribution of the information to a much larger group of people also substantially increases the likelihood of a breach of confidentiality requirements. As the number of people who have the information increases, the level of confidentiality applied to the information decreases. The type of disclosure proposed under Bill 29 could pose harm to the commercial side of the mineral resource business for companies that mine or may be considering it in the NWT.
Government regularly protects all businesses and industries with confidentiality of their financial information for tax reporting calculations. Bill 29 is unusually intrusive in proposing that detailed, sensitive information be shared more broadly. It begs the question, would government then ask other mining and related businesses to reveal confidential information related to their profitability?
Similarly, our personal tax filings are not available to politicians. We see no added value, and the Chamber does not, and the fact that the added risk in sharing business details beyond those whose jobs and skills and responsibilities are to use this data to calculate royalties and other taxes.
It is also noted in the statement from the Chamber that there's unclear intentions but that the bill is jumping the gun on the GNWT's royalties study. The intentions behind Bill 29 are unclear. If it's to allow politicians to propose different royalty systems, we'd suggest this is not appropriate. Since we understand the GNWT ITI is currently conducting an in-depth royalty review to look into this issue, that process should be completed to help the standing committees, all MLAs, and the public understand the current system before discussing options to others. And I do recognize that things have advanced since the time that this was shared with us. Again, the Chamber likes to point out that they're not aware of any other Canadian jurisdiction that is requiring such an unusual level of sharing of detailed and frankly sensitive business information as this bill would require. And like I said before, the closest might be Quebec but that only requires a partial reporting of information from the rock quality to the process plant. So in other words, they do not require any information on processes and sales beyond that.
I won't go into any further. I think everybody can understand why this does not support the GNWT mandate -- or sorry, this Assembly's mandate to promote and secure our mining sector. I don't think that it's any surprise that I would come out and -- to not support this bill. I definitely was a member of the committee that was not in agreement with it. For me, all this is doing is giving the Minister just yet another option to say maybe I'll share it with you. It isn't obligating her to do so, so therefore it just seems to be very redundant and not necessary to me. Thank you, Madam Chair.