Alfred Moses

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The bill allows for a municipality to choose to implement this tax. GNWT is not putting the tax on people. It is up to the municipality. As you have heard before, we have five other taxbased communities that decided not to do this, and we have one municipality that has decided to put this through, should this bill get assent. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. In terms of the collecting of that type of data, there is not a consistent method at this time to see what kind of data is being collected, and I do understand that committee did get some information from one of our local hotels, but that's something that we will be taking a look at and monitoring should this bill come to assent. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. As I mentioned, we did do the consulting and met with all our stakeholders, and we did try to strike a balance with the various exemption scenarios. This what we came up with. This is a tourism tax that would be for Yellowknife municipalities, for the City of Yellowknife and not for the GNWT. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. On my far right is my deputy minister of MACA, Ms. Eleanor Young; sitting on my right is Mr. Ian Rennie, legislative counsel, Department of Justice; and on my immediate left is Ms. Grace Lau-a, director of Community Operations from Municipal and Community Affairs. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. As you've heard here already, when we did do the consulting of the stakeholders, the department did attempt to strike a balance with the various exemptions scenarios that were offered. This is what we came up with, what's in the bill here. There are a couple provisions in here that also allow for further exemptions to be prescribed under regulation, but also under the bylaw exemption from the tax, the council is given discretion to provide for exemption from the tax in addition to those required under subsection 5. When we go to clause-by-clause review, you will see it in...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I'm here to introduce Bill 18, An Act to Amend the Cities, Towns and Villages Act. I would like to thank the Standing Committee on Government Operations for their review of this bill. In addition to the two suites of amendments I will present, this bill makes three housekeeping amendments that have been suggested by the Legislative Division of the Department of Justice.

Mr. Chair, tourist accommodation taxes exist in some form in all provinces in Canada, whether in the form of a tax on hotel rooms collected by the province or municipality, or a destination...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Even with the preliminary numbers that we do have, the initial work that was done, we don't have a concrete set of numbers right now. However, that is funding that can go into other areas as we do program services within the government.

In short, we just wanted to look at ways that, as the GNWT, there would be some savings.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. As my deputy minister had mentioned, there was a very long consultation process that we had with a lot of stakeholders.

In terms of the GNWT exempt, that came from the GNWT. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will talk to my Cabinet colleague from ITI with the suggestion that was raised by the Member, and as I said, the revenues that do come out of this, it is going to be our first year, so we are going to see what those final numbers are and see what the City of Yellowknife gets.

Then we also have the other opportunity for the energy retrofits that the city can use. All of this money might not go into tourism. Some of it might go into energy retrofits with some private homes, possibly.

No, I'll take it as commented, I think, for the good comments from the Member. Thank you.