EdinburghNLP/nunavut-hansard-plusplus huggingface dataset:
I wonder if the minister could, to help our standing committees get some advance information, provide it to us through the back channel process and allow us to review it before the spring session.
I thank the minister for that commitment and I look forward to reviewing that report.
Also in your business plan on page J-14, one of your 2007-08 priorities was the Municipal Taxing Model and we have heard about this initiative for many years.
I’m wondering if the minister could update us on the progress that her department has made in advancing the Municipal Taxing Model in Nunavut.
I would like to ask you and the members if Shawn Maley could go up to the witness table so that he can respond to that question.
I would like to ask my colleagues if Mr. Maley could go to the witness table.
Sergeant-at-Arms, please escort Mr. Maley to the witness table.
Welcome, Mr. Maley.
So you can get a response to your question, Mr. Peterson, if you can ask it again.
I’m going to be very straightforward. Can the department just update us on the Municipal Taxing Model that’s outlined as their priority in 2007-08 in their business plan?
Beside me is my Assistant Deputy Minister, Shawn Maley, and he will respond to that question.
The member is correct. This is an initiative that has been ongoing for a number of years.
One of the things that we quickly realized when we were looking at this new area of study was that we were quite unsure as to the base from which the municipalities could draw their tax revenue from potentially.
And, we also received some words of caution from some Members of this Assembly that they were cautiously optimistic that this was maybe an initiative that could move forward but they wanted to be sure that we weren’t going to be adding another burden onto an already burdened consumer group.
So the first thing that we decided to do was look at making sure our property assessments were up to date and that’s taken some time. I am happy to say that as of today, we are much further ahead in terms of knowing that the properties that are available to tax are pretty much accounted for and the data is good.
We have done some consultation with some interested communities and we have also looked at a number of taxation models in other jurisdictions that we could possibly model some of our new program after. One of those includes the Northwest Territories, which has now empowered their communities with the ability to tax if they so choose.
So we’re putting that together, we’re not yet done, we still have at least another year to go in terms of developing this, but our minister and the department are committed to having a report completed by the end of this fiscal year and have it ready for consideration and direction from the Assembly.
I thank the minister and Mr. Maley for that information.
Can the minister or Mr. Maley tell the House what are the benefits of a community having taxing authority?
I will have my assistant deputy minister respond.
I thank the minister and thank the member for the question.
It’s a good question. Quite often when you mention taxes, people tend to get a funny look in their eye and not really want to discuss the issue with you.
The ability for communities to tax does bring a new source of revenue to their operations and it gives them a certain level of independence.
With the new mining activity in the territory and where, in some cases, there is prolonged mining activity within the municipal boundaries, it does also provide the municipality to tax a new corporate source of revenue.
So the ability to tax allows communities the independence to make financial decisions by themselves.
However, as we have heard from some Members of the Assembly, we do want to make sure that it’s done in a manner that won’t overly hinder the people that are already paying their costs and at the same time, give the community some real sources of new revenue that they can make some decisions and maybe be able to look at building infrastructure that the government doesn’t have to pay for entirely itself.
My concern is, and I’m probably one of the individuals you’re referring to about hearing from there, most of the communities in Nunavut don’t have an economic base and most of the housing in municipal communities is public and social housing, so you really don’t have a tax base as such.
If hamlets are going to implement the Municipal Taxing Model in their communities, it will be on the backs of a small group of people, so I’m wondering how they would be assured that they’re not going to be paying all the taxes.
Presumably in the taxing model, you can only raise so much from taxes, so you’re still going to have to provide some government funding. There are grants in lieu of taxes; I have heard that phrase.
Could you give us a little bit of insight into the different types of models you’re exploring in your research that would potentially be implemented in Nunavut?
I will have Mr. Maley respond to that question.
I thank the minister and the member for the question. In looking at models and there are lots of different models that have been implemented across the country, the one we’re closest to is...
First of all, homeowners currently pay property tax now; they just pay it to the territorial government.
The territorial government is responsible for the assessment of their property on a yearly basis, we do that through a contractor, and then once the assessment is done, the homeowner receives a yearly invoice. Outside of Iqaluit, generally, you would find a property owner to have tax anywhere from $200 to $500, depending on the community and the value of their property. So that’s the first level of tax that could be made available to communities.
The second level of tax would be if a community is to have the ability to tax, they could go to a local plebiscite and ask the rate payers themselves if they’re willing to add on more tax for an improvement to their arena or for an improvement to their community hall, then they themselves, as ratepayers, would have the ability to vote on that. So that’s another example.
Thirdly, none of the models that we looked at do we expect that the government won’t have a role to play as a funding agent, whether it’s through an unconditional capital grant, or whether it’s streamlining federal money, like the City of Iqaluit gets through gas tax, and so forth.
So the model that we’re developing certainly sees the government as a partner but also allows the communities possibly to make some decisions on raising money that they feel they can afford and that the people themselves in the community will agree to.
While you were speaking earlier, I was rolling some numbers around in my head.
If you had a community of 1,000 people and only 100 homeowners, and 15 of those who own their home are actually paying property taxes, then they’re effectively the ratepayers, so would they be the ones that would be making all the decisions for the hamlet if they were asked to vote on permits to the ice arena?
The government is paying all the rest, you know for the public and social housing, so the actual true homeowners are the ones paying their property taxes.
So it would be them that I would think that would effectively make the decisions if the hamlet council was asking for input into taxes.
Can you clarify that for me?
I thank the minister and the member for the question.
Generally, the question that gets asked of ratepayers, whatever you consider a ratepayer, in the case of most tax basis, it would be homeowners, businesses, and anybody generally that pays the taxes that you’re taxing. In some cases, it may not be property tax; it may be an additional level of tax, but generally, you want to ask the question to the people who are going to have to pay it. Again, it’s an excellent question and it really highlights the issue.
There is no sense in putting more of a burden on the people that are already paying, so we need to make sure that the model is made-in-Nunavut, it makes sense to people, that the ratepayers that are involved are interested in it, and that it will make a difference in terms of the revenue stream.
I thank minister and Mr. Maley for that update.
I’m sure we will hear more as it goes along. I’m happy to know that the department is heeding the cautions and concerns of some of the members that they heard from and that they’re not going to jump into this with both feet without fully exploring the pros and cons.
I trust that you will probably be consulting with all the mayors and councils and the Nunavut Association of Municipalities on that initiative.
I can understand the conundrum you find yourself in, you know Nunavut is a unique area; we just don’t have the tax base to do some of the things that we want to do. When I was Mayor of Cambridge Bay many years ago, I remember having this conversation with Mr. Maley and the media heard about it.
They reported that we were jacking up the taxes in Cambridge Bay and I had people calling me up wondering what was going on. Of course, I had to calm them down and say, “No, no, it’s just an issue that the government is working on.” That was five or six years ago, so you’re still working on it and that’s good.
I wanted to move on to page J-15 of your business plan. One of your priorities for 2008-09 is to “Actively work with Government of Canada to advance Nunavut’s Building Canada program.” Can you give us an update on how you’re proceeding to work with the Government of Canada and then rolling out that program in Nunavut?
Once again, I will have Mr. Maley answer that question.
As you are aware, the minister was designated the responsibility for negotiating the Building Canada Fund Agreement. To date, we have finalized and signed off on the framework agreement which is, as you are aware, a higher level sort of MOU.
We are now about a third of the way through the negotiations on the funding agreement, which is really the trigger for the funding to flow.
The process for developing projects is being led by the Minister of Finance and they will be sending out a letter shortly as to how that is going to work.
Right now, we’re collecting data from various departments and through the NCIAC, and developing potential project lists for consideration in the future.
Mr. Peterson: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank the minister and Mr. Maley for that information.
The Minister of Finance, in his budget speech, made a lot of positive announcements. One of them was the announcement of the Building Canada program and provided a list of example-type projects they would fund.
He also, in his budget speech, mentioned that the Government of Nunavut was going to reconfigure their 2008-09 capital planning in view of the fact that these new funds are available to help fund some of the projects that the House approved last November.
Can the minister or Mr. Maley confirm for me that the exercise that you’re currently going through to reconfigure the 2008-09 capital plan will actually result in projects that were on, I don’t want to call it a wish list, a priority list by MLAs, mayors and councils that have been previously identified, will some of those projects be added to the 2008-09 capital plan and will we actually see them commence this year or next fiscal year?
I’ll have Mr. Maley respond to that question.
What I can tell the member is that the established capital process will be followed. The Building Canada Fund was kind of announced mid-year for us and the federal government is interested in having money flow immediately so that we can get projects up and running.
At this point in time, it would be really early for us to commit that the specific projects from the priority list will be on the first announcements. But I can tell you that the list of priority projects, which we previously consulted on with communities, will be projects that will be going forward as part of this whole process for consideration.
Total Operations and Maintenance, to be Voted. $54,851,000.
Chairman (interpretation): At this time, we are going to take a 20-minute break and we will be back.
>>Committee recessed at 15:43 and resumed at 16:07
Chairman: Welcome back, members, (interpretation) minister and your officials.
We will go to page J-6. (interpretation ends) Branch Summary.
Total Operations and Maintenance, to be Voted. $63,067,000.
Chairman (interpretation): Thank you. (interpretation ends) Now go to page J-7.
As I indicated in my opening comments, I was curious as to the status of providing some funding to the NAMIX program in 2008-09.
Can the minister provide us with an update if the department is going to help them out?
I thank the member for the question. NAMIX is funded in 2007-08. The funding is $200,000 and $100,000 is for training, so altogether that’s $300,000, and it’s the same for 2009.
Minister, I heard that the NAMIX program had to provide you with a report on the success of that insurance program over the last few years.
Could you confirm that a report has been requested and confirm again what information you’re seeking from them in that report?
We are reviewing NAMIX now.
That’s a very brief answer.
Can you provide me with some specifics of what information you’re seeking from the NAMIX to prepare your report?
There is a review ongoing presently of NAMIX and it’s primarily a value for money review of the performance of the past five years of NAMIX, and the value that the government and NAM received from the program as it was structured.
In addition to that, there are two additional components to the review - one is compliance with the subscribers’ agreements and the additional one is an actuarial based assessment of the go forward needs for NAMIX.
The NAMIX program is under page J-5.
I’m not sure if that program is under J-7, so if you could clarify that for me, Mr. Peterson.
I’m on Protection Services; it’s insuring and protecting community assets, so that’s how I’m interpreting it.
We brought this up before where the preparations of the business plans and the preparations of the main estimates is they don’t match up.
I wish the government would find an easier way of doing this, rather than requiring us to constantly be detectives; I haven’t seen much improvement since I have started.
Having said that, Mr. Chairman, can the minister indicate if it’s the intention of the department to continue supporting NAMIX in the coming years subject to that report?
Chairman (interpretation): Thank you, Mr. Peterson, for that clarification.
I guess I’m going to have to ask open-ended questions so that I could hopefully get some longer answers, or no more questions where you can say yes or no.
I think the public would like to receive some information. Can the minister tell the House how successful NAMIX has been in the last five years in the opinion of the department?
The NAMIX program has been very successful in Nunavut. Although NAMIX has greatly reduced the number of liability losses, they remain somewhat vulnerable due to the recent significantly large fires throughout Nunavut.
I indicated in a Member’s Statement earlier in this session that the NAMIX and the Nunavut Association of Municipalities were invited to a conference in Montreal, the Aboriginal Financial Officers Conference. They made a presentation on one of the best practices type of initiatives in Nunavut and in Canada.
It was very encouraging to see that other jurisdictions are trying to learn from Nunavut, so I encourage the minister and her officials to continue to support NAMIX.
On the same page of Protection Services, you mentioned emergency preparedness. Can the minister tell the House how many hamlets and cities in Nunavut have up-to-date, current emergency response plans?
I will have my Deputy Minister, Mr. Akeeagok, respond to that.
I would also like to thank the member.
This bill was reviewed last fall and revised by the members, and we appreciate that.
We have now relayed this information to the communities and we are currently preparing training modules for the communities.
However, since the legislation was updated, we have not sent it out to all the communities. Some communities are still working off of the old legislation, while others are using the new legislation.
However, we do not have a list of which communities have started using the new legislation that you approved.
We have started to implement the legislation as passed and have identified resources, including a worker who is working with the communities to ensure that they are using the new legislation as all communities are required to work with the new law.
I thank the minister and the deputy minister.
The recent emergency in Rankin Inlet highlighted the importance to have current and updated emergency response plans. I understand, from listening to the discussions in the House, the media, and my colleague from Rankin Inlet who praised the folks down there, that they had a very good emergency response.
It concerns me that, possibly, other communities don’t have emergency response plans and as we have seen, an emergency can occur any time.
My question for the minister: when these hamlets have emergency response plans, how do they practice implementation of the emergency response plans that they have developed for their communities?
I will have my Deputy Minister, Mr. Akeeagok, respond.
All the communities have emergency plans and they have to constantly update their plans because it’s better to be prepared in case there was an emergency.
We have told the communities that they need to have a plan.
As a department, we support their plans, and we have to support them. Our minister has tasked us to do that in case there was an emergency, to provide support to the communities.
For example, with the incident in Rankin Inlet, there was great cooperation between the hamlet, the government, and the Power Corporation.
At this time, when they are making the plans, we expect, in English it’s called ‘Table Top Exercise,’ so we figure that we will be able to work closely together.
For instance, in Rankin Inlet, we have to review what has happened and what we learned from that experience, both from an operational and staff perspective. Those are the things that we will review and we will forward them to the communities. These are some of the things that we are trying to accomplish.
I thank the minister and deputy minister.
What I’m trying to get at is in a community, you can have an emergency anywhere and they may have an emergency response plan, but if you have a disaster at the airport, such as an airplane crash, then that’s much different than a power generator failing or all of the generators failing.
Depending on the type of disaster, there has to be one organization that has the overall responsibility to coordinate all the others; you will have the Health Department involved, you will have the fire department, you’ll have the power plant, you’ll have the stores, schools, and all that.
So I’m just trying to get an idea of how the community develops their emergency response plan and integrates all the key stakeholders into the plan and practices it so that when there is an actual emergency, wherever it is in the community, then everybody knows what their role and function is that day so that they mitigate any serious breakdown of communication that may result in a loss of a life or an injury.
Mr. Akeeagok (interpretation): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank the member for his question.
(interpretation ends) With this new Emergency Measures Act, there was a subtle change in wording on the plans; it is now called a program. Typically, plans tend to sit on shelves and then when it’s needed, they’re dusted off. What we are encouraging by calling it a program is it should be integrated into everyday life of the community.
There are various areas that the member touched on, which, if there is an airplane incident, if there is a health incident, all those have to be integrated into the community program and also to the territorial program.
Everybody has to understand their roles; I agree with the member on this; for each component, that’s what we’re striving for. With the new legislation, that spells out sort of who’s got the authority at certain points in time. Our minister has the ultimate authority at the territorial level.
If it is a localized emergency, there are sections in the legislation that allows for the municipality to declare the local state of emergency and that’s where some of their duties get to be exercised. (interpretation) Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Peterson: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank the deputy minister for that answer.
Could you expand a little bit... now, I know you don’t want documents sitting on the shelf collecting dust and we all encourage these plans to be alive and active and always be updated.
We hope that there’s never an emergency or disaster, but to be ready for one of those emergencies or disasters, will the communities be encouraged or assisted to simulate disasters or emergencies so that they all know on a particular day, whatever day that is or time in the future, if there is ever a disaster, that they have rehearsed what to do to and they could respond quickly and effectively?
Again, Mr. Akeeagok will respond, please.
Mr. Akeeagok (interpretation): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. (interpretation ends) Yes, I could expand a bit more.
At our departmental level, we have sent out the Municipal Emergency Response Program template and we do have a dedicated staff that has been getting a hold of the communities and will be getting a hold of communities, along with key stakeholders in the community, to give them the updated hazard and risk assessment and begin their program development.
Also, we have training started and as a matter of fact, they’re on the search and rescue side of things. We do have training taking place right now on the structure of the search and rescue and how we can provide training courses to each community.
At the same time, we are aware that each community does things slightly differently but what we are encouraging is for them to use the template and allowing for dialogue work and the stakeholders, and have the community assessed and assess their possible hazards and risks, and ensure that if a disaster or emergency does happen, that all communities and the territorial government will be prepared to respond to that.
We never want disasters or emergencies to happen but it’s known to happen, so we have to be prepared.
I thank the minister and deputy minister for that detailed information.
We hope that we will never need to use the emergency plan, but it’s always good to be prepared.
I found that, as my time on the hamlet council in Cambridge Bay, we were prepared. We actually simulated a few incidences involving the fire department and the Health Department, it worked really well. It was kind of interesting because it also highlighted and raised awareness amongst the public that disasters and emergencies could occur when they saw people practicing.
On page J-19 of your business plan, under Search and Rescue, you have identified or budgeted $500,000 for search and rescue.
I know that can’t be the full amount of the costs of search and rescue in Nunavut, but can you tell us, as the minister, what the annual cost is to the Government of Nunavut for search and rescue missions?
The budget for expenditures changes from year to year and I will ask Mr. Rafter if we have the amount available with us.
If I understood the member’s question, he is looking for a figure for a total cost of search and rescue across Nunavut for each year, and that would include federal agencies, national defence, a number of federal departments, as well as funding from this government.
We don’t have a single consolidated figure of the total costs for searches in Nunavut at this time.
I thank minister and Mr. Rafter.
Is that a figure that you can, through your various channels, obtain for us?
Hon. Levinia Brown: Yes, we can work on that.
Can I ask the minister to commit to have that information available for the spring session?
We will try and make a report and table it in the House to the members during the spring session. If we can complete it by that time, we will try and do so, but we will have to wait on other departments to get that information.
I think it is important information to have.