Thompson: NTI’s fuel numbers are wrong

SEAN MCKIBBON

RANKIN INLET — Nunavut’s Tunngavik’s numbers don’t add up, embattled Public Works Minister Manitok Thompson said this week.

Thompson presented the legislative assembly with her own set of numbers this week, in response to a barrage of questions last week from regular MLAs about a five cents per litre price hike at the gasoline pump last December.

She also used the numbers to refute charges made recently by NTI that the boost would cost Nunavut hunters almost $1 million.

Even Nunavut’s total gasoline sales don’t add up to the increased cost that NTI predicted hunters would pay as a result of the hike, Thompson said.

“The guys are tip-toeing around this because they don’t want it to get out,” said Thompson, referring to her colleagues on the other side of the legislature.

Using 1999 figures from the Nunavut Wildlife Harvest study NTI has estimated that hunters would pay $878,680 more for gasoline over the course of a year. Assuming a total of 6,259 hunters registered as of November 1999, NTI said the group would consume 16,000 litres of gasoline a year.

But Nunavut’s total gasoline sales only amount to $733,303.47, according to Thompson’s numbers, which were detailed in an analysis paper prepared by Roy Green, the petroleum products division comptroller in Thompson’s department .

The total projected increase in revenues for cash sales at the pump amounts to only $306,155.36, Thompson said.

How high?

But to regular MLAs the issue was not so much how high the price had already gone, but how much further it might go and how much warning consumers would have.

“It just seems they always make these kinds of announcements around Christmas,” said Arviat MLA Kevin O’Brien.

In the legislature, Baker Lake MLA Glen MacLean noted that world oil prices are rising.

“My fear is we may see an even higher increase in the next six months,” MacLean said. He asked Kelvin Ng if there were any plans to make sure a further increase does not happen.

Ng said the price of all fuel in Nunavut, including, heating oil, aviation fuel, and gasoline, is subsidized already by the territorial government to the tune of $9 million a year.

Ng said alternative means of bringing down the cost of fuel in Nunavut are being explored. He said the petroleum products division uses a separate revolving fund to protect consumers from large price swings.

But the fund is not able to enter into a huge deficit position, Ng said.

In her Feb. 22 statement to the legislature, Thompson said the “Price Stabilization Fund,” used by the petroleum products division is able to absorb “up to $5 million without a massive impact on pricing.”

However the fund has had a growing deficit as a result of trying to hold the line on prices, she said, and was in danger of exceeding it’s $5 million deficit limit.

A day before Thompson’s statement, O’Brien said outside of the legislature there was little justification for raising prices in December for gas purchased last year. He said the new higher-priced fuel would not be purchased until June.

Smaller order, higher price

But Thompson said in her statement to the house that waiting to calculate a new price only on the new fuel would lead to an even greater price boost later.

She said fuel costs have already gone up as a result of the smaller fuel order that Nunavut would place separately from the GNWT’s. Also, she said, transportation costs for the recent sea-lift season had increased by an average of 33 per cent.

Thompson did say last week that the Nunavut government might be willing to consider assisting NTI with a gasoline subsidy for hunters through the Hunters’ Assistance Program. But in her statement Tuesday, she phrased it somewhat differently.

“If we were to consider providing any kind of additional subsidies, these additional funds would end up coming from other programs. This is one of the reasons I had suggested the possibility of assistance for registered hunters through an NTI funding program.”

After hearing the government is anticipating a $30-40 million surplus Iqaluit West MLA Hunter Tootoo asked Thompson if her department had a surplus and if any of those funds might be used.

Thompson, however, refused to answer the question saying she did not want to discuss the surplus prior to the tabling of the 2000-2001 budget.