Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I give notice that on Monday, May 31, 2004, I will move that Bill 9, Write-off of Debts Act, 2004-05, be read for the first time.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Yakeleya has touched on an area that I have referenced on my own in the past when we see a large development happening in communities and the cash flow increases. I think it would be good that we could work with communities, either through the Aurora College process and establish programs, or work with the resource companies themselves when they hire employees to do a part of that. I think there are avenues we can look at and try to encourage that type of service to be available.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, as the process is when the department feels they are running a program that doesn’t have the required resources within that department, they would bring a bill forward and it would, in the sense of money bills or requests for more money, come to FMB, which I am Chair of. We would discuss that request at that table and have a vote on it. If a department is able to justify in the eyes of FMB as a whole, the support would be there to proceed and we would identify where we would come up with those monies. So there is a process. The initial stage when there...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There would be a number of factors we would have to take into consideration and look at what specific point of time we would be looking at. For example if we used a total labour income over a 31-year span of looking at all the development, that’s the building of the pipeline, the continuation of running that operation as well as our mining operations, we would look into the area of $2.5 billion being raised totally for income. You break that down into an annual income ranging of about $9 million to about $561 million, again that being total labour income. The...

Thank you, Madam Chair. To my immediate right is the deputy minister of the Department of Finance, Ms. Margaret Melhorn; to my immediate left is Ms. Rebecca Veinott from the Department of Justice; and, further to my right is Mr. Gerry Gagnon, manager of tax policy. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I do have some comments on Bill 6, An Act to Amend the Payroll Tax Act, 1993 and the Income Tax Act.

Thank you for the opportunity to present Bill 6, the government’s proposed changes to the Payroll Tax Act, 1993 and the Income Tax Act.

In my budget address, I proposed an increase to the payroll tax rate from one percent to two percent effective January 1, 2005. To minimize the negative impacts of this change on lower income NWT residents, I also proposed that the personal income tax rate for the lowest bracket be decreased from 7.2 percent to 5.9 percent and the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I give notice that on Monday, May 31, 2004, I will move that Bill 10, Forgiveness of Debts Act, 2004-05, be read for the first time.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, earlier this month, the students and staff of Samuel Hearne Secondary School in Inuvik narrowly avoided tragedy when the roof of the foyer collapsed. As a parent of three children in the school and as MLA for the area, I am grateful that no one was injured. Since then, efforts have been focused on getting students back to class so that they are able to complete their school year. Although the subsequent fire in the gymnasium was a major setback, the timely response of the Inuvik fire department and the efforts of the school and education officials...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, there are a number of avenues we continue to work on, not only in our own sources of revenue, but today is the final piece of that package. We continue to work with our partners, with aboriginal governments in the Northwest Territories, when we go to Ottawa and advance the royalty revenue and discussions that are ongoing and try to ensure that the messages goes out that we are, in fact, doing the best we can with what we have. If we are going to be a positive asset to Canada, then the federal government needs to recognize that there needs to be more...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'm not sure if that would require two acts to do what is being done presently through the example used of Health and Social Services. We do have, through Health and Social Services, a drug and alcohol program. On the finance side, the sales side and the taxes received through the sale of tobacco comes through the Department of Finance. There could be work, and I think the Member may be heading to this; the fact that we do have some issues that have caused us some concern and we recognize that. It's in the jurisdiction that the Liquor Board does have...