Bill Braden

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To the bill, I am speaking in favour of this bill, but like the one that we just passed, Mr. Chairman, with little enthusiasm, even less than the one before. The advantage of the benefits of this bill, which would obviously be for people in the higher earning brackets are quite real and quite tangible. This is much more of an initiative that we, as a government, are taking of our own volition. Part of what we see as an available opportunity to raise some more revenue, not a lot of revenue, but it is one that the Finance Minister obviously has enough conviction that...

That's all for now. I may have other questions later on but thank you, Madam Chair, that's all.

Thank you. So at four percent, and this is taxable income, this is not sales, this is after everything else if you have a so-called profit, and will be moving up to $300,000 at a four percent rate. How competitive is that four percent rate? I know this isn't to the bill, Madam Chair, but I would just like a bit of information. How does the NWT rack up at four percent for a small business tax rate? Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a couple of comments and a question. I would start by saying that I'm speaking in favour of the bill. I think it's predictable, Madam Chair, that in the context of a tax bill I can't say that I'm speaking with enthusiasm, but as the Minister and his officials have explained to committee and in public forums in the last while, the circumstances around increasing the corporate tax rate is fairly straightforward. At least in part due to some of the factors outside of our control; what happens in other parts of Canada and as a consequence of the rather weird and...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to follow through with a bit more detail on the beverage container recovery program. I am a big fan of it, but I would like to explore a few things that are put before us here. Ms. Lee has already asked about the administrator. I would just like to follow through with some of this other detail. For the $10,000 listed here, was public education material produced? Thank you.

Would the Minister commit to developing and putting to this Assembly and the business community some list of criteria that would help the business community make some judgments about when it is or is not a good idea to get into business with this government? I’m not getting a whole lot of security really that this Cabinet wants to do business on a level playing field. Can you tell us how you might go about setting out those rules more clearly? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Alright, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Obviously I am here and Mr. Voytilla is there doing the math. The rate at which this subsidy is increasing has been a concern of mine for some time, and I think in the course of the budget that we just passed we asked the government to come back with ways to help stabilize, look at options to how we can stabilize the cost of this program. It is a good program, but we need to be careful how we manage it. I won’t dwell on that anymore, we will be dealing with that hopefully in the very near future.

I would like to ask for the coming year are we anticipating...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That’s a helpful discussion of the fluid realm in which policy is stated. I’m not challenging that Cabinet should have the authority at times to make exception. I think that is a valuable part of our institution. However, as the Premier said yesterday, where we can warrant it. Principles like this come into play very dramatically, especially when you’re a business person. So, Mr. Speaker, what I’d like to ask now is, what criteria are in place. Can the Minister put some shape and some form and some scope to what the criteria are that would guide Cabinet when making an...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With this additional half a million dollars, what does this bring the total cost of the power subsidy program to for this fiscal year? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. A few days ago in this Assembly, we learned that Cabinet has approved the forgiveness of $800,000 in taxpayers’ money due to a business deal that we went into not working out. Even though we had adequate protection for the taxpayers’ money, Cabinet made a decision to forego it. In more recent days, we learned that a major policy of this government, the business incentive policy, was dodged in favour of an assumption that only a southern product could be brought into the North on an economic basis. The signals that our government is sending to the business community...