In the pan-Canadian framework, the federal government committed to work with the three territories to estimate the impacts of carbon pricing on the territories. During the course of 2017, our two departments worked closely with each of the territories and produced three studies, which we shared with each territory. Those studies did indeed confirm that there will be direct and indirect impacts of carbon pricing and that some of those indirect impacts will, as you mentioned, arise from the fact that goods purchased from other jurisdictions will already have a carbon price embedded in them.
Your question is about whether there is a risk of double payment of carbon pricing. It's our view that there is no risk of that. I'll explain why.
I don't mean to demean the significance of the question, but let's take a simple example, a loaf of bread that's produced in a province and then shipped north. The fuel used to produce that bread would have been subject to a carbon price, so there will be a carbon price embedded in the cost of that loaf of bread. But there won't be an additional carbon price imposed on that loaf of bread in the Northwest Territories. The only way that the cost of that bread might increase as a result of carbon pricing is because of additional transportation costs associated with moving it to the store, and there may be a price on that fuel. It would, however, be a price on the particular fuel used to move the bread, not an additional price on the production of the loaf of bread itself.
That's one example. Another is that fuel is subject to the carbon levy in the federal backstop system, and the system that the Northwest Territories government is developing is also a levy system.
The levy is imposed on a fuel supplier or a distributor. If the fuel supplier is south of 60, then the fuel supplier would be paying the carbon price south of 60 only. If the fuel supplier is located in the Northwest Territories, then the fuel supplier will be paying it there. There aren't, though, two fuel suppliers paying two separate carbon taxes.