EdinburghNLP/nunavut-hansard-plusplus huggingface dataset:
Mr. Speaker, I wish to report that Bill 14, An Act to Amend the Income Tax Act has been reviewed by the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Services and that the Bill is ready for consideration in Committee of the Whole as amended and re-printed.
And Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to waive Rule 68(5) and have Bill 14 moved into Committee of the Whole for today.
Speaker: The member is seeking to waive 68(5) so the report can be moved to Committee of the Whole today.
Do we have any nays.
The Bill is received and will be referred to the Committee of the Whole.
Tabled Document 067 - 1(5): Correspondence to Iqaluit DEA on Roles & Responsibilities
Mr. Speaker, I wish to table correspondence received by the District Education Authority regarding a statement of their roles responsibilities according to the Department of Education.
Tabled Document 068 - 1(5): Clyde River Protocol Joint Review
I wish to table the following document, Clyde River protocol joint review.
Tabled Document 069 - 1(5): Intergovernmental Agreements Made on Behalf of Nunavut by the Office of the Interim Commissioner
Tabled Document 070 - 1(5): Joint Response to the Report of the Standing Committees on the 2001/2002 Budgets & Departmental Business Plans
Tabled Document 071 - 1(5): GN Response to Standing Committee of Government Operations & Services Review of the 1999/2000 Annual Report of the Information & Privacy Commissioner
Tabled Document 072 - 1(5): Combined 1999-2000 & 2000-2001 Public Service Annual Report
Tabled Document 073 - 1(5): Towards a Representative Public Service - Statistics as of June 30, 2001
Tabled Document 074 - 1(5): Towards a Representative Public Service - Statistics as of September 30, 2001
I have numerous documents here to table.
First is the Intergovernmental Agreement undertaken by the Office of the Interim Commissioner on behalf of Nunavut.
There is the joint response to the Standing Committee of the Legislative Assembly on the Budget and Departmental business plans of the government.
There is the Government of Nunavut response to the Standing Committee of Government Operations and Services review of the Annual Report of the Information and Privacy Commissioner.
There is the Public Service Annual Reports for 99-2000, 2000-2001 and finally there is Towards a Representative Public Service staffing statistics as of June 30th, 2001 and as of September 30th, 2001.
Mr. Speaker, I give notice that on February 20, I will move the following motion.
That Tabled Document 67-1(5) be referred to Committee of the Whole.
And Mr. Speaker, I'll be at the appropriate time asking to deal with my motion today.
I move, seconded by the Honourable Member…actually Mr. Speaker, I guess I need unanimous consent to deal with my motion today.
Motion 018 - 1(5): Tabled Document 67 - 1(5) Referred to Committee of the Whole
Mr. Tootoo: Mamianaaq, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the Honourable Member for Quttiktuq, that Tabled Document 67 - 1(5) be moved into committee of the whole for discussion.
Tabled Document 41 - 1(5), Nunavut Liquor Act and also Bill 14 with Mr. Iqaqrialu in the Chair.
We also have tabled document 67 - 1(5) in committee of the whole.
In accordance with the authority vested in me by Motion 002 - 1(5), the committee of the whole will stay in session until it reports itself out.
Members we begin, we will break for twenty minutes. The clock above the door is not functioning properly so we will be using the clocks in front of you and we will break until four o'clock.
>>House recessed at 3.38 p.m. and resumed at 4.12 p.m.
Chairperson (interpretation): Thank you my colleagues.
During the committee of the whole we have tabled document 41 – 1(5).
Ms. Williams (interpretation): We would like to commence with the review of tabled document 41 – 1(5), Nunavut Liquor Act Review, and once that is completed then Bill 14 and report progress.
Chairperson (interpretation): Thank you, Ms. Williams. Do we agree that we will deal with tabled document 41 – 1(5).
Do we agree. Does the committee agree that the minister can go to the witness table with his officials.
Thank you for going to the witness table Minister Ng. Could you introduce your officials please. Mr. Ng.
Hon. Kelvin Ng: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to introduce Mr. Geoff Hughes the Director of Revenue Management with the Department of Finance.
Chairperson (interpretation): Thank you, Minister Ng. At this time are there any general comments from the committee members.
Are you talking about general comments or can we ask our questions along with our general comments.
At least so the technician knows when to push the button if you want to do your general comments you may do so and you will have the opportunity afterwards to ask questions.
You have 10 minutes for general comments.
We have gone through this report quite carefully and everybody knows that it is very important for all of the people in Nunavut and that we need to look at this issue very carefully.
It effects a lot of people, especially the Departments of Health & Social Services and Justice, as far as the liquor issue.
But we do understand that when this board was travelling they were looking at the Act more so than the social issues.
We cannot separate them but we will try to be respect that this consultation was for the Act.
There is a lot of misunderstanding and a lot of people in Nunavut are concerned that our government is trying to make communities' access to alcohol easier.
So I think we need to make sure that we look at this very carefully, and I am going to have a whole lot of questions Mr. Chairman.
I will stop with my comments right now.
Any other general comments on the Nunavut Liquor Act.
Ms. Williams (interpretation): If there are no more general comments I would like to start off with a question.
I would like to ask to the minister how he views the ten recommendations.
Would you like to see them go ahead and be implemented and if you want to see them implemented, what is the time frame that you are looking at.
Mr. Chairman, first of all I would like to clarify that this report that I asked the liquor board to undertake by doing consultations throughout Nunavut.
If I could make some specific recommendations to this.
I have accepted the report in respect to having received it.
I have given it to the MLA's and now it has been tabled publicly so that the public at large certainly has access to it.
We have no formal position as a government yet on this.
Currently we are waiting, obviously I have some feelings in respect as to what can and cannot be done.
We are waiting to hear additional feedback from this legislature.
Depending on what you want to do with this report that has been provided and tabled in the House now and whether or not you want to undertake some additional consultations with Nunavummiut on whether they want to confirm that some of the recommendations are legitimate or not, and possibly make your own recommendations to me.
I can tell you that in the short term there is a big issue about access to alcohol right now.
Particularly illegal access is certainly something that we are all aware of.
We will be looking at some short term measures in the next, I can say, 30 to 90 days, in trying to deal with possibly closing some of the avenues of where there is some illegal access right now.
I can't speak to any specifics right now because it hasn't been fielded through formally yet, through the cabinet.
I can say that we plan on doing some legislative changes at some point at time.
The sooner the better obviously, but a lot will depend on members of this House and what they see as a priority on recommendations that I could bring forward, or not bring forward to my colleagues and cabinet.
Chairperson (interpretation): Thank you, Mr. Ng. Any other general comments.
I have a general question on this report. My first question would be how much did this report cost.
Mr. Chairman, the work for the consultation and providing support, a lot of it was internally through the Department of Finance staff.
The overall cost was give or take in the neighbourhood of 60 to 70 thousand dollars overall from the Liquor Revolving Fund.
We noted that there were eight communities that were visited.
All of the communities were decentralized communities and there isn't one community that was small or non decentralized that was visited and I just want to make that clear that it seemed to be planned.
Why just decentralized communities.
So I just wanted to make that comment.
To make sure that we are respectful to other smaller communities in Nunavut.
I have a whole lot of questions.
Maybe get somebody else to ask a question or comment, Mr. Chairman.
I want to make it clear that we gave everyone, without actually having the Liquor Board members go to every community, we gave options to communities, that we would have paid to send representatives to where ever the hearings were being held.
We gave opportunities for them to provide verbal or written submissions to the Board itself as well, in hearing what the concerns were.
So we gave as much opportunity as possible and obviously as I indicated earlier there still is opportunity for feedback depending what the legislature or what members want to do with the report that has been tabled in the House.
Chairperson (interpretation): Thank you, Minister Ng. Any other questions.
My other question that I would like to pose is not included in the recommendations.
I know that you did not deal with the social issues.
You went to consult with the other communities and there is another side to it.
So therefore, I would like to ask.
Because of alcohol we have problems.
Does the minister know or is he aware of the problems that are encountered through alcohol abuse and that there is no facility to treat those people with alcohol problems...(interpretation ends)…just so that we are balanced.
Chairperson (interpretation): Thank you, Ms. Williams. Minister Ng.
Mr. Chairman, this Board was not given a mandate to review the adequacy of the social support network for those that are having problems in dealing with abuse of alcohol. But they did make a note to recommendations that the government do undertake that in trying to balance off their report.
So they asked us to evaluate the effectiveness of the current system in dealing with individuals who have alcohol abuse problems and that certainly falls under the mandate of the Department of Health and Social Services. So from that perspective there is ongoing evaluation of any issues that are brought to the minister responsible.
As the government and a member of the government, certainly that recommendation will be taken into consideration as part of the overall report.
There is a lot of emphasis on bootlegging in this report.
I know that government does get revenue from alcohol sales.
So because of the problem of boot-legging there should be something about increasing the fines or penalties particularly for selling alcohol to minors or bootlegging.
All of those kinds of things.
There are a number of those things that we have to look at.
Let me say we spent so far according to Minister of Health Mr. Picco, that he has spent 300 thousand dollars on anti-tobacco and the cessation campaign.
We need to see this the same way that we have cigarette packages that have labels that are warnings.
Some of them are very graphic.
A lot of cigarette packages, I know some people don't even want to buy cigarettes with a picture of lungs on the package.
I would think that we should do the same thing with alcohol.
So those kinds of things should be looked at.
We need to do prevention as we are doing with tobacco and I don't think there are many people in jail because they were smoking cigarettes and we have a good program so that we don't smoke too much.
And we have many people in jail, we have a lot of family violence.
We have people in the hospital because of alcohol.
There are a lot of FAS and FAE issues in Nunavut.
All of that needs to be looked at. There are many more of those kinds of things that we need to look at to make sure that let's say if we are going to be dealing with an Act like this so that we could access alcohol better in Nunavut, there must be also be the other side to it that we do prevention.
Where we have treatment places where people could go.
I am not saying we should increase alcohol sales.
I am not saying that it should be accessible.
I am not saying that at all but we need to look at many issues.
Mr. Chairman, Qujannamiik.
The member raises some valid points and that is the whole emphasis as to why I distributed the report to members and tabled it so that we can get additional information and additional recommendations that may be able to assist us.
There is a lot of good stuff in there.
However, I don't think we can really deal with it today.
Some of these things can be discussed, not too much from the political stand point but from the reality, like Ms. Williams was talking about.
How do we balance between the problems and the Act to govern the Liquor licensing in Nunavut.
It talks about things that are not very Canadian.
For example, if you live in Cambridge Bay you order your alcohol from Iqaluit.
That would put extra freight costs rather than having a store in Cambridge Bay and employing people there and collecting taxes.
These are simple things to say.
But on the other hand some recommendations that the Liquor Board made are very much worthwhile considering.
But what I would like to see Mr. Chairman is that sometime during this winter that we have a more thorough discussion as to where we want to go with the Liquor Act.
How do we balance the thoughts and feelings from the social problems that arise out of alcohol or alcoholism.
And the balancing of it with like I said, what is available to the other Canadians should also be available in Nunavut.
We can start banning some stuff that is as bad or even worse than alcohol, smoking is one of them that was talked about.
Soda pops.
How many children's teeth are affected, not just teeth but their health is affected by candies and soda pops.
I think it would be ignorant of us to single out the potential problems with alcoholism or alcohol related illnesses.
We as Nunavummiut should start looking at ourselves and say okay what causes the health risks to children and adult lives.
I think one of the members’ statements today about alcohol syndrome cases and here in the introduction it stated that the general feeling in some communities to date seems to be that, "…while there are many problems associated with alcohol, the onus for making the situation better should shift solely from a reliance on the law to the individuals taking responsibility for his or herself." That is a good point.
But how do we as a government, as leaders deal with that.
We can not just say it is up to you, to individuals.
But being a member of a Canadian society with the rights and privileges under the Charter, this would be good to have these kinds of rights that are enjoyed by other Canadians.
At the same time we must look at, as a society as Nunavummiut, what causes problems.
Not just alcohol, but candies, and soda pop and smoking everything else that effects our health.
Our mental and physical health.
So I would recommend that we discuss this over the winter and have a good roundtable discussion before any kind of amendments to the Liquor Act can be made.
Just one last thing at this time.
I am sure the Health and Social Services Minister is really concerned about these kinds of things because there are huge social and financial costs of preventable issues like Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and Fetal Alcohol Effects.
This could be prevented and they cause social and financial problems, it costs a lot financially and creates huge social issues.
So at that, I think that will be my comments right now.
Mr. Nutarak (interpretation): Mr. Chairman, the minister responded to one of the questions in regards to the report that was tabled.
If we want to deal with this right away, we could deal with it right away.
I know that all ministers have legal advisors. I would understand some Acts taking priority over the others if we simply had one legal advisor.
Each minister retains legal advisors at any given time.
If we look into the future I think that we should deal with this right away and make amendments as it becomes necessary.
It will take approximately one year to deal with this matter and there will have to be first and second readings and then we would have to wait another 120 days before the final reading.
So it is going to take a while to go through the whole process.
I would be very pleased if we start dealing with this.
Also there are the ten recommendations that were put together by the people who did the tour and I am sure that they will have to be looked into again before they are implemented.
I do know that the minister supports the recommendations that were made.
If we could implement these ten recommendations, is it possible to get this going right away.
Hon. Kelvin Ng: Excuse me.
Mr. Chairman, as I indicated earlier there are some things that we think are good in the recommendations.
I think there will be some short term measures that could be put in place and regulatory changes that would require ministerial sign off.
That is what we are looking at right now.
It might be some things on a short term for some, that in a reasonably short time frame that could be put together for legislative changes that we would bring back in the February session.
If it is possible and get some immediate feedback that these are good ideas or thing that there is support with the Members of Legislature here that we would bring forward to the standing committee system.
And in the longer term of course there is a whole revamping and the establishing of a new Nunavut Liquor Act which is a longer term matter that Mr. Nutarak alluded to, which would be a more lengthy process and would obviously involve a more lengthy consultation and public review, etc.
Since that is the case we will be making amendments as they go along the way, so since that is the case I would like to make a motion.
Mr. Chairman, but I don't know if we have a quorum or not.
I apologise Mr. Chairman.
I can only make a motion after all the general comments are made.
In regards to the Nunavut Liquor Act report, it is a good beginning and we can start working from here.
In regards to liquor related issues there are some communities that are prohibited and there are some communities that are allowed liquor.
Liquor has had an effect in all the Nunavut communities and there are a lot of side effects that we see at the community level.
I think that all the people of Nunavut have to be included during this discussion.
And I think that is the only way that we can have a Nunavut-made Act.
We are extremely pleased to be making legislation that is Nunavut made.
We have never been able to do that before Nunavut was created.
We now know that we can make a Nunavut made Act not only for the Liquor Act but also for the other Acts.
This is something that is very important to the people of Nunavut.
Liquor was introduced not very long ago and there were serious consequences from the introduction of Liquor.
So we will have to make a Nunavut made Act.
Also revenue is generated by all governments through the sale of liquor.
So the question would be, how do we want to deal with this.
The people don't have all the information out there and as we all know there are some communities that prohibit liquor but the liquor does go into the community one way or another.
My 10 minutes is up.
I believe we will have to have further discussions so I would like to make a motion.
I didn't realize we changed the Chair.
I think we will have to make a lot of comments on this Nunavut Liquor Act.
We want to plan this carefully so I would like to make a motion.
Committee Motion 002 – 1(5): TD 041 – 1(5) Report by the Nunavut Liquor Licensing Board Referred to Standing Committee
(interpretation ends) I move that tabled document 41-1(5) Report by the Nunavut Liquor Licensing Board to the Minister of Finance be referred to the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Services for review and that the Standing Committee report back to the Assembly at the earliest opportunity.
Is your motion translated.
Mr. Arvaluk is your motion translated in Inuktitut.
Mr. Arvaluk (interpretation): Yes, Mr. Chairman.
Chairperson (interpretation): Thank you. There is a motion on the floor.
Are you in favour of the motion.
The standing committee will be dealing with the Nunavut Liquor Act Report.
Minister Ng do you have any more comments.
No, I am prepared to move on to the amendments to the Income Tax Act, Mr. Chairman.
Chairperson (interpretation): Thank you, Minister Ng. Do you agree that we will now deal with Bill 14 and Tabled document 67 – 1(5).
Do you have any opening comments for this Minister Ng.
Bill 14 - An Act to Amend the Income Tax Act - Consideration in Committee
Hon. Kelvin Ng: Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to appear before you to discuss the amendments to the Nunavut Income Tax Act.
Mr. Chairman, the purpose of this legislation is to amend the Nunavut Income Tax Act so that the tax on income approach, to determining Nunavut's personal income taxes may be adopted.
Beginning with the taxation year 2001, all provinces and territories that have a tax collection agreement with the Federal Government have moved to this method of determining their personal income taxes.
As you may know the federal Finance Minister the Honourable Paul Martin, offered to waive the administrative start-up costs and to provide legislative tracking assistance for all three territorial governments if the TONI method for calculating Nunavut's personal income tax was adopted for this taxation year.
Due to this offer and the potential for tax policy flexibility this method will offer our government and future governments we have introduced the legislation for consideration.
Both the NWT and the Yukon have also proceeded with adopting TONI for this year.
I want to assure members that this legislation is simply a conversion from the current method to the new method.
No taxpayer in Nunavut will experience an increase in his or her personal income tax in 2001 as a result of these amendments to the Nunavut Income Tax Act.
As members can see it is very complex piece of legislation.
Before we begin the questions and answers on this bill Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank Ms. Elizabeth Kalluk from the legislative division of the Department of Justice for the dedication and hard work that she put into ensuring that this Act was translated into Inuktitut.
That concludes my opening comments Mr. Chairman.
I look forward to questions on the bill.
Chairperson (interpretation): Thank you Minister Ng. Does the Chairman for the Committee have opening comments.
Mr. Tootoo: Mr. Chairman, the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Services is pleased to have had the opportunity to review Bill 14, An Act to amend the Income Tax Act, with the Minister of Finance and his officials.
Members will recall that the Minister announced the Tax on Income, or "TONI", initiative during our May sitting in Cambridge Bay.
At that time, the Minister assured the House that the change in the method of income tax calculation would not result in taxpayers in Nunavut paying more personal income tax.
Mr. Chairman, Members have noted that all three northern territories are moving to the TONI system this year.
The TONI system of income tax calculation has been described as having several benefits for the jurisdictions that adopt it.
These include protecting the revenues of provincial and territorial governments in the event that federal tax rates are decreased, as well as providing provinces and territories with the flexibility to make changes in such areas as tax rates, the number of tax brackets and the structure of tax credits.
In effect, the system is intended to give governments increased ability to use the tax system to further social policy goals.
Mr. Chairman, Members have noted that the move to the TONI system across Canada has taken place relatively recently.